Welcome back, Careblazer. It’s my first post of 2020. A new year, the start of a new decade. Let’s kick the year off by talking about a topic that many of you find so frustrating. 

Does your LOWD with dementia sometimes follow you around the house? Let’s say you get up to go to another room, or you just want a moment to yourself, but your loved one follows behind. They seem to always want to keep you in their line of sight? This type of behavior is called “shadowing” and it’s common in dementia. 

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here. 

Let’s talk about some possible reasons this happens and what you can do about it so you don’t feel helpless and smothered by your LOWD.  But before I get started with that, I want to let you know that I’ll be hosting another one of my free, live Care classes coming up in a few weeks. If you want to learn ways you can reduce your caregiver stress without...

Welcome back Careblazer. Does your loved one with dementia no longer seem to have an appetite? Have they stopped eating foods they used to love? Do they constantly say that food no longer tastes good?  

In today’s blog, I'm answering a question I saw recently posted inside my Careblazer Community on Facebook. One of the members asked why their loved one with dementia no longer seemed to have an appetite. Foods they once enjoyed, they no longer eat or seem interested in eating. I’m going to share one of the most common reasons this occurs and what you can do to cope with this since reduced appetite can lead to weight loss, poor nutrition, skin problems, and increased risk of depression. 

If you find yourself in the opposite situation- your LOWD seems to be eating everything in site- then you’ll want to check out THIS video I did. (https://youtu.be/dWesTZgR0Nk)

Also, real quick before I get into this common reason, I want to let you know that there are 2...

Well hi there Careblazer!

I did a FB live Q & A several months ago and a Careblazer asked a really good question that I realize I’ve never done a video on. I want to talk about how to talk to children about dementia and how your kids or grandkids can get more involved with the person who has dementia. 

A lot of times, it’s really hard for kids to be around the person with dementia and to understand what’s going on. They may not understand why their grandparent is saying weird or mean things or even sometimes yelling, hitting, throwing. In some ways it can be scary and your child may not even want to be around the person with dementia. So let’s talk about this and some approaches you may want to take. 

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here.

Alright, back to children and how to help them understand and cope with a grandparent who has dementia. 

First of all, I want you to think about just how confusing this disease is...

Welcome back Careblazer!

Today I want to talk about an emotionally painful topic. I’ve talked about it before in a video called what to do when your loved one makes rude comments toward you. The gist of that video is to remind yourself that it’s the disease talking and not the person. And even though in that video, I talk about what to do if your loved one was mean before the dementia, I want to spend some more time talking about this today. 

The number one challenge I hear when I encourage Careblazers to remind themselves that the rude comments are coming from the disease, is that their LOWD has always been mean, always said mean things, called them names and so on. So now that it’s happening while they have dementia, it’s hard to believe its the disease since they’ve always been that way. Making matters work is you’re providing care, sacrificing time, and dealing with a lot of challenges for someone who is being rude to you. 

So...

Welcome back Careblazer. In the past I’ve written about Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, and lewy body dementia. I’ve been getting some requests for Frontotemporal dementia so in this I’m going to talk about what exactly that is and what symptoms it usually shows.

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here. 

I did a video on this before, but because there is a lot of confusion on the topic, I’ll just do a quick recap on what the difference is between dementia and all the other terms we hear about like Alzheimer’s disease, lewy body dementia, and so on. 

Dementia is a general term- you can think of it like the word cancer. When someone says they have cancer it tells you they are sick, something is wrong with their body. But it doesn’t give you the specific details of what is causing the sickness. For example, breast cancer, skin cancer, lung cancer, and so on. Those different cancers are caused by different...

Welcome back Careblazer. If you are looking for a way to feeling better in the quickest, simplest way possible without a new medication or another doctor’s appointment, then today topic is for you. It takes just a few minutes a day but it can change so much about your life and if you’re a Careblazer, then I’m guessing you’ve got a lot on your plate right now and you can use a simple and free way to improve your life. 

 If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here. 

What I’m about to share is inspired by the recent gratitude practice we did inside the Careblazer Community on FB for the month of November. It was so well received and helpful that I wanted to share it with those of you who aren’t in the group because I’ve seen the positive results it’s done for the Careblazers in that group and I”ve read the research that shows how helpful it is. 

Now most of us have heard about gratitude before-...

Hey There Careblazers!

This week, instead of writing a blog or doing one of my regular videos, I arranged an interview with an elder law planning firm to answer Careblazers' legal questions. More specifically, I worked with Drake and Cash Law Firm (https://drakeandcash.com/) to answer the following questions:

What’s the difference between a Power of Attorney and Guardian?

How does someone make sure they have a “strong” POA?

How is it determined when a POA is “in effect?”

Do you have to file the POA with the country clerk?

What’s the difference between Medicare and Medicaid and what’s the best way to protect assets for spouses?

Is there protection for family living in the home of someone with dementia?

What is a living trust and should you have one?

Is divorce recommended to protect assets?

Is an IRA and VA disability counted as income for medicare eligibility?

Can someone with dementia make a change to their will without their POA knowing?

...

Hey there Careblazer!

The holidays are upon us. While all the commercials and TV shows, and people you come across may seem happy, joyful and doing all the wonderful holiday things, I know for many of you this is an especially difficult time. It can feel lonely and sad and like you’re one of the few people around that doesn’t have that great family connection or that has to spend Thanksgiving cleaning up bathroom messes, waking up in the middle of the night for your loved one who is wandering or having bathroom accidents, or screaming that they just want to go home when they are at home.

For some of you, this is especially difficult because your loved one is no longer at home with you. They may be in a nursing home or assisted living facility, or even have passed away. Given all the emotions that typically come along with this time of year, I wanted to spend some time talking about something that creates a lot of distress and discomfort for us that we all do from time...

Hey there Careblazer, welcome back!

Today I want to talk about a simple way to respond to objections or complaints your loved one may have. Many times Careblazers try to respond to their loved one with rationale and logical explanations and they are frustrated when their loved one doesn’t accept it, disagrees with it, or continues to complain about the same thing. The idea for this video came to me after a Careblazer inside of my Ultimate Care Course shared a simple way she responded to her husband who was complaining about the food in his nursing home. After trying to respond rationally and getting frustrated that her husband continued to complain and insisted things change, she tweaked her approach and found that it worked wonders. Her husband stopped complaining about the food and their visits and conversations were more pleasant. I hope you will find this approach helpful to some of your specific situations. 

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, please...

Well hello there, Careblazers!

I hope you are having a wonderful day. It’s November in Arizona so it’s the best time of year. We don’t have trees that change color in the city, but we do have license plates that change color. We often joke that we know it’s fall in AZ when the license plates change because there are a lot of people who live in AZ for half the year when the weather is really nice, we call them snow birds. Then when the summer comes and it’s triple digits everyone leaves. So the roads go from super busy and congested in the fall and winter to open space in the summer. It’s fun. I really just enjoy feeling like pumpkin pie is an acceptable breakfast and I don’t have to feel guilty about it. 

Okay, let’s get to today’s topic. Today, I want to talk about respect in dignity when providing care tasks to your loved one. Last week, I talked about respect and dignity when speaking to or about your loved one...