Dementia

Learn how to better communicate with a person with Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia have a strong influence on language. The disease has an effect on speech and making use of words, as well as the comprehension of words. As the disease advances, language as a method of connecting will become less effective, and family and friends may need to choose different methods for communicating to interact with their loved one.

Hired Hands Homecare, top providers of the professional elderly care Santa Rosa families need, offers the following tips to help in communication and understanding with a loved one with dementia:

Make sure to use a kind tone – slower, lower, smiling.
Always treat the individual as an adult with the utmost respect, and make your best effort to be patient, flexible, supportive and calm.
Be sure there are … Read More »

Search online for “activities for seniors” and you’re likely to find numerous crafts, games, memory stimulation puzzles, and of course, the requisite bingo. However, what you won’t discover—unless you dig a little deeper with your searches—are the meaningful, beneficial activities that give significance to our lives. And yet, if you ask older individuals what they most want to do, the majority of them won’t mention bingo, crafts and games. What they want more than anything is to feel useful.

The University of Minnesota reveals details on how the most vulnerable times in our lives are a person’s first year of life, and our first year after retiring. The loss of the sense of purpose found in a fulfilling profession can cause significant health issues – and even an earlier fatality rate, if that awareness of purpose is not maintained … Read More »

Hand it to the health care industry to come up with yet another couple of acronyms to add to their extensive list – ADLs and IADLs. These are prevalent terms in the healthcare field used to describe the routine self-care activities that an individual engages in on a regular basis to stay independent and healthy. It is also common for these acronyms to appear in conversations if you are looking for in-home care options for an older person, or if you are researching the cost of long-term senior care for yourself or someone you know.

It’s often human nature to deny that we need assistance, although the truth is that often we really do. This is especially true for older adults, who may not wish to confess they need help doing the everyday things that used to be a snap but now are getting to be more complicated. For loved ones, this can make recognizing that an older adult requires help more difficult to identify. The encouraging news is that there are tools that can help family members better determine when a senior needs help.

In the Bay Area, they’re forecasting TRIPLE DIGIT HEAT for the upcoming Holiday Weekend!

We all suffer in hot weather. However, for elderly and disabled people and those with chronic health conditions such as vascular disease or diabetes, the weather does not have to hit 100 degrees to cause heat stress or even deadly heat stroke.

As we age, we gradually lose the ability to perspire and regulate our body temperature. This is why older people tend to overdress — they don’t feel heat the same way anymore. Heart rates do not speed up-or return to normal-as fast during exercise. Older skin also thins and offers less protection from the sun. Poor circulation, heart, lung and kidney diseases, and high blood pressure increase the risk for heat-related illness. Being overweight or underweight also increases risk.

Medications taken for a variety of diseases … Read More »

These Alzheimer’s disease tips can help when someone is experiencing an alternate reality.

Alzheimer’s disease alters someone’s mind so that memories surrounding more recent incidents are forgotten or mixed up while memories about the more distant past often continue to be intact. This might cause past years to make more sense to an individual with dementia than the present. An individual’s alternate reality can be his or her method of making sense of the present through previous recollections.

People with Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia often have problems expressing themselves, and sometimes their alternate reality has more to do with a desire or a particular feeling they are trying to express than it has to do with the things they are saying.

For instance:

“When will my husband be home?” This question could possibly be more about a desire for … Read More »

Like the saying goes, there’s no place like home; but what do you do when a senior loved one firmly insists on going home – when he/she already IS at home? Sadly, when caring for an elderly person with Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia, this is an all too common conundrum. And the confusion and plaintive yearning being conveyed are simply heartbreaking – and, if we’re truthful, aggravating.

At Hired Hands Homecare, our specially trained Alzheimer’s and dementia care team helps family members handle complex situations such as this, and we encourage trying the following to help restore peace to an unsettled senior with dementia:

Rather than rationalize, validate. Reasoning or disagreeing with someone with dementia can actually boost agitation and unrest. Even if the senior is in the exact same home she’s resided in for more than thirty years, … Read More »

Caring for a senior with Alzheimer’s disease can seem like attempting to solve a constantly changing puzzle. Once you determine the solution to one segment, you discover that the picture has changed, and you need to reconsider your plan of action for the next levels of Alzheimer’s.

Trying to figure out the puzzle of Alzheimer’s care demands continuous education and a group effort, including professionals specifically trained in the numerous facets of Alzheimer’s disease support. Hired Hands Homecare provides the following tips, courtesy of the Alzheimer’s Association, to help families in establishing care strategies throughout the levels of Alzheimer’s:

Early Stages: Family members can best assist a loved one with Alzheimer’s through planning together, offering a patient, calm, listening ear and memory prompts when needed. Strategies consist of:

Be a care advocate for your family member, offering emotional assistance and encouragement.
Help plan for … Read More »

These days, music is more available than ever before. For those who carry smartphones or tablets with them everywhere they go, hundreds of thousands – if not tens of millions of songs – are simply a couple of touches or finger swipes away. If you are a caregiver for an older person, your smartphone can become one of the most useful tools in your possession in helping connect music and seniors. This widely circulated video clip from the Alive Inside documentary demonstrates just how tremendously effective music can be for older adults with limited abilities and dementia.

With vast musical libraries readily available from places like iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody, Spotify, and countless others, we can now find music, in many instances for no cost, in a variety of styles in mere seconds. Caregivers can ask clients or family members what sorts … Read More »

What feels finer than sinking into a warm, relaxing bath at the conclusion of a long, busy day? While most of us relish the luxurious comfort that bathtime brings, for seniors, especially those struggling with the challenges of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, it’s certainly not blissful.

For many different reasons, such as memory issues, feelings of vulnerability, or physical distress from the pressure or temperature of the water, helping a senior with the personal care tasks of bathing can feel a lot more like entering a battleground.

Hired Hands Homecare of California wants to help restore the joy of bathtime for both the senior and his or her caregiver with these ideas:

Ensure safety. Keeping the bath area free from hazards is critical. Make certain that:

Grab bars and mats that are slip-resistant are strategically placed in and around the tub
The water temperature is … Read More »