Dementia Sayings Quotes

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Affirmations are our mental vitamins, providing the supplementary positive thoughts we need to balance the barrage of negative events and thoughts we experience daily.
Tia Walker (The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love)
Caregiving often calls us to lean into love we didn't know possible.
Tia Walker (The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love)
In the heart or every caregiver is a knowing that we are all connected. As I do for you, I do for me.
Tia Walker (The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love)
By loving you more, you love the person you are caring for more.
Peggi Speers (The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love)
The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.
Lao Tzu
Not me," said Orion cheerily. "I'm just a teenager with hormones running wild. And may I say ,young fairy lady, they're running wild in your direction." Holly lifted her visor and looked the hormonal teenager in the eye. "This had better not be a game, Artemis. If you do not have some serious psychosis, you will be sorry." "Oh, I'm crazy, alright. I do have plenty of psychoses," said Orion Cheerily. "Multiple personality, delusional dementia, OCD. I've got them all, but most of all, I'm crazy about you.
Eoin Colfer
She almost thought she'd said the words aloud, but she hadn't. They remained trapped in her head, but not because they were barricaded by plaques and tangles. She just couldn't say them aloud
Lisa Genova (Still Alice)
Mariângela says that the best way to work with dementia is to act as if the person you knew is still inside the wreckage. If you’re wrong, and the person you knew is gone, then no damage is done but the standards of care stay high; if you’re right, and the person you knew is still bricked up inside, then you are the lifeline.
David Mitchell (The Bone Clocks)
Without a future, the mind turned back in on itself. That’s not dementia. One might even say it’s the only rational response to the inevitable.
Derek B. Miller (Norwegian by Night (Sigrid Ødegård #1))
Offering care means being a companion, not a superior. It doesn’t matter whether the person we are caring for is experiencing cancer, the flu, dementia, or grief. If you are a doctor or surgeon, your expertise and knowledge comes from a superior position. But when our role is to be providers of care, we should be there as equals.
Judy Cornish (The Dementia Handbook: How to Provide Dementia Care at Home)
Hi lover," he says to me, completely forgetting what happened before. He knows who I am. He knows that I am the one person who he loves, has always loved. No disease, no person can take that away. (p.205)
Michael Zadoorian (The Leisure Seeker)
Still. Mariângela says that the best way to work with dementia is to act as if the person you knew is still inside the wreckage. If you’re wrong, and the person you knew is gone, then no damage is done but the standards of care stay high; if you’re right, and the person you knew is still bricked up inside, then you are the lifeline.
David Mitchell (The Bone Clocks)
Dear Stephen,’ he begins. ‘This is a difficult letter to write, but I know it will be a great deal more difficult to read. I will come straight to it. I believe you are in the early stages of dementia, possibly Alzheimer’s.’ Elizabeth can hear her heart beating through her chest. Who on earth has chosen to shatter their privacy this way? Who even knows? Her friends? Has one of them written? They wouldn’t dare, not without asking. Not Ibrahim, surely? He might dare. ‘I am not an expert, but it is something I have been looking into. You are forgetting things, and you are getting confused. I know full well what you will say – “But I’ve always forgotten things. I’ve always been confused!” – and you are right, of course, but this, Stephen, is of a different order. Something is not right with you, and everything I read points in just one direction.’ ‘Stephen,’ says Elizabeth, but he gently gestures for hush. ‘You must also know that dementia points in just one direction. Once you start to descend the slope, and please believe me when I say you have started, there is no return. There may be footholds here and there, there may be ledges on which to rest, and the view may still be beautiful from time to time, but you will not clamber back up.’ ‘Stephen, who wrote you this letter?’ Elizabeth asks. Stephen holds up a finger, asking her to be patient a few moments more. Elizabeth’s fury is decreasing. The letter is something she should have written to him herself. This should not have been left to a stranger. Stephen starts
Richard Osman (The Last Devil to Die (Thursday Murder Club, #4))
We have known for a good ten years,” says Dr. Mosconi, “that taking out the ovaries or the uterus increases the risk of dementia in women.
Deborah Copaken (Ladyparts)
I have a tiny little secret hope that, after a decent period of silence and prose, I will find myself in some almost impossible life situation and will respond to this with outcries of rage, rage and love, such as the world has never heard before. Like Yeats's great outburst at the end of his life. This comes out of a feeling that endowment is a very small part of achievement. I would rate it about fifteen or twenty percent, Then you have historical luck, personal luck, health, things like that, then you have hard work, sweat. And you have ambition. The incredible difference between the achievement of A and the achievement of B is that B wanted it, so he made all kinds of sacrifices. A could have had it, but he didn’t give a damn.[...] But what I was going on to say is that I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business. Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing. And I think that what happens in my poetic work in the future will probably largely depend not on my sitting calmly on my ass as I think, "Hmm, hmm, a long poem again? Hmm," but on being knocked in the face, and thrown flat, and given cancer, and all kinds of other things short of senile dementia. At that point, I'm out, but short of that, I don't know. I hope to be nearly crucified,
John Berryman
Even though people experiencing dementia become unable to recount what has just happened, they still go through the experience—even without recall. The psychological present lasts about three seconds. We experience the present even when we have dementia. The emotional pain caused by callous treatment or unkind talk occurs during that period. The moods and actions of people with dementia are expressions of what they have experienced, whether they can still use language and recall, or not.
Judy Cornish (The Dementia Handbook: How to Provide Dementia Care at Home)
When you’re up there at the podium, accepting your Nobel or whatever, I will know “I would like to thank my mother,” you had better say. I have the sticker still, by the way. BRILLIANT! Which I’m not and, chances are, neither are you. You might be David Bowie though he’s a once-off. You may discover the cure for cancer but it’s a long shot. Maybe you’ll arrest climate change. Someone had better, and fast. The likelihood is you’ll be another working stiff in a sea of working stiffs. The world needs working stiffs. If you are one such stiff, I will know Cannot unknow My grandmother in her nineties, dementia, crying out for the baby, the baby, oh God where’s the baby. I get it now. The magnitude. She couldn’t unknow either.
Claire Kilroy (Soldier Sailor)
Wandering has long been seen as part of the pathology of dementia. Doctors, carers, and relatives often try to stop patients from venturing out alone, out of concern they will injure themselves, or won’t remember the way back. When a person without dementia goes for a walk, it is called going for a stroll, getting some fresh air, or exercising, anthropologist Maggie Graham observes in her recent paper. When a person with dementia goes for a walk beyond prescribed parameters, it is typically called wandering, exit-seeking, or elopement. Yet wandering may not be so much a part of the disease as a therapeutic response to it. Even though dementia and Alzheimer’s in particular can cause severe disorientation, Graham says the desire to walk should be desire to be alive and to grow, as opposed to as a product of disease and deterioration. Many in the care profession share her view. The Alzheimer’s Society, the UK’s biggest dementia supportive research charity, considers wandering an unhelpful description, because it suggests aimlessness, whereas the walking often has a purpose. The charity lists several possible reasons why a person might feel compelled to move. They may be continuing the habit of a lifetime; they may be bored, restless, or agitated; they may be searching for a place or a person from their past that they believe to be close by; or maybe they started with a goal in mind, forgot about it, and just kept going. It is also possible that they are walking to stay alive. Sat in a chair in a room they don’t recognise, with a past they can’t access, it can be a struggle to know who they are. But when they move they are once again wayfinders, engaging in one of the oldest human endeavours, and anything is possible.
Michael Bond
Hiro would have chalked it all up to class differences, except that her parents lived in a house in Mexicali with a dirt floor, and his father made more money than many college professors. But the class idea still held sway in his mind, because class is more than income -- it has to do with knowing where you stand in a web of social relationships. Juanita and her folks knew where they stood with a certitude that bordered on dementia. Hiro never knew. His father was a sergeant major, his mother was a Korean woman whose people had been mine slaves in Nippon, and Hiro didn't know whether he was black or Asian or just plain Army, whether he was rich or poor, educated or ignorant, talented or lucky. He didn't even have a part of the country to call home until he moved to California, which is about as specific as saying that you live in the Northern Hemisphere. In the end, it was probably his general disorientation that did them in.
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
We say that a human being is a person and a distinctive, fixed self with a name and a life. He has an identity. But what is this self really made of, except from the basic elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, phosphorus etc. and their subatomic particles? If a person is a specific, static, unchanged entity and existence, then what if an accident or a disease completely alters his body features? What if fear or madness changes his thoughts and perceptions? If dementia takes away his memories, or if drugs alter his emotions? And what if life circumstances, good or bad luck, modify his motives, his plans and his desires? Is it still the person we say he is? Or is selfhood a ghost, a useful fiction of the brain? An ever-shifting kaleidoscope of thoughts, feelings and perceptions? Flashes of hopes and desires? A bundle of alternating opinions and ideologies, of conflicting instincts and urges? If we take away all these from him, what would be left behind? If every drop of the ocean evaporates, is not the whole ocean gone? The immutable selfhood is a very old illusion and the last of illusions we ‘re going to abandon; if we ever will…
Giannis Delimitsos (A PHILOSOPHICAL KALEIDOSCOPE: Thoughts, Contemplations, Aphorisms)
What is it that makes a person the very person that she is, herself alone and not another, an integrity of identity that persists over time, undergoing changes and yet still continuing to be—until she does not continue any longer, at least not unproblematically? I stare at the picture of a small child at a summer’s picnic, clutching her big sister’s hand with one tiny hand while in the other she has a precarious hold on a big slice of watermelon that she appears to be struggling to have intersect with the small o of her mouth. That child is me. But why is she me? I have no memory at all of that summer’s day, no privileged knowledge of whether that child succeeded in getting the watermelon into her mouth. It’s true that a smooth series of contiguous physical events can be traced from her body to mine, so that we would want to say that her body is mine; and perhaps bodily identity is all that our personal identity consists in. But bodily persistence over time, too, presents philosophical dilemmas. The series of contiguous physical events has rendered the child’s body so different from the one I glance down on at this moment; the very atoms that composed her body no longer compose mine. And if our bodies are dissimilar, our points of view are even more so. Mine would be as inaccessible to her—just let her try to figure out [Spinoza’s] Ethics—as hers is now to me. Her thought processes, prelinguistic, would largely elude me. Yet she is me, that tiny determined thing in the frilly white pinafore. She has continued to exist, survived her childhood illnesses, the near-drowning in a rip current on Rockaway Beach at the age of twelve, other dramas. There are presumably adventures that she—that is that I—can’t undergo and still continue to be herself. Would I then be someone else or would I just no longer be? Were I to lose all sense of myself—were schizophrenia or demonic possession, a coma or progressive dementia to remove me from myself—would it be I who would be undergoing those trials, or would I have quit the premises? Would there then be someone else, or would there be no one? Is death one of those adventures from which I can’t emerge as myself? The sister whose hand I am clutching in the picture is dead. I wonder every day whether she still exists. A person whom one has loved seems altogether too significant a thing to simply vanish altogether from the world. A person whom one loves is a world, just as one knows oneself to be a world. How can worlds like these simply cease altogether? But if my sister does exist, then what is she, and what makes that thing that she now is identical with the beautiful girl laughing at her little sister on that forgotten day? In this passage from Betraying Spinoza, the philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (to whom I am married) explains the philosophical puzzle of personal identity, one of the problems that engaged the Dutch-Jewish thinker who is the subject of her book.5 Like her fellow humanist Dawkins, Goldstein analyzes the vertiginous enigma of existence and death, but their styles could not be more different—a reminder of the diverse ways that the resources of language can be deployed to illuminate a topic.
Steven Pinker (The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century)
The older I get, the more clearly I see that I need my husband. The last decades of life are unpredictable, and potentially tragic. It doesn’t stop being tragic just because tragedy is so likely. I heard that the wife in an elderly couple I know was losing her mind to dementia, and was sad to hear it, but accepted the news in the usual way; it’s just one of the unfortunate things that can happen when you’re old. But if you imagine that it was a couple in their twenties and heard the wife had begun gradually and irreversibly losing her mind, you wouldn’t just say, “Ah, what a shame.” It would be horrifying. Well, it’s just as horrifying to lose your beloved at the age of 70 or 80. The fact that everyone is treating it as “just one of those things” would only make you feel more alone.
David Ford (Glory and Honor: Orthodox Christian Resources on Marriage)
Losing a loved one from cancer, a heart attack, or even a bullet – it's not the same. With dementia, it's such a slow loss. Imagine what it must be like to watch a person you love disappear a little more each day. And then there's the strange and scary behavior. How can you . . .?” Uncertain of what else to say, her voice trailed off.
Joan Zlotnick (Griefwriting)
What course are you on, then?" she asks. "History." "So you want to read about people who died before you can even remember," she teases, nudging me in the arm. I take a moment to think about what it means to me so that the words come out right. "History is who we are," I say finally. "The past shapes us. Even the parts you can't remember
Ciara Smyth (The Falling in Love Montage)
ONE STRESS RESPONSE FOR ALL STRESSORS There is but one stress response for all stressors. When I say all stressors, I mean all stressors, including exercise stress, relationship conflict, abuse of any kind, financial strain, discrimination, work tension, harassment, and racism. In the same way that moderate-to-vigorous-intensity exercises activate the SAM and HPA axes, so do psychological stressors; however, unlike exercise, psychological stressors tend to be involuntary and long-lasting, meaning that they are less likely to give you the allostasis that you want and more likely to give you the allostatic load that you don’t want. If you’re here because your mind needs healing, you’re probably familiar with chronic stress. At worst, it leaves you feeling helpless. And then something very unexpected happens: Instead of fight or flight, stress causes you to freeze. Learned Helplessness and How to Overcome It “There’s nothing I can do to change things, so what’s the point in even trying,” Leslie thinks to herself before crawling back into bed and burying herself under the covers.
Jennifer Heisz (Move The Body, Heal The Mind: Overcome Anxiety, Depression, and Dementia and Improve Focus, Creativity, and Sleep)
In the Netherlands, where euthanasia now accounts for more than 4 percent of total deaths in the country, the law goes further. There, a patient with very advanced dementia can be euthanized at an agreed-upon moment, if he has left written instructions in an advance healthcare directive—and if he appears, to his physician, to be “suffering unbearably” at the time of his death. The moment might vary from patient to patient: when he has lost the ability to speak, say, or when he does not recognize his wife. Dutch doctors are allowed to euthanize a patient by injection, even if he is “no longer able to communicate.” According to the Dutch euthanasia review committee’s code of practice guide, a doctor in this situation must “interpret the patient’s behavior and utterances” and watch for any physical signs “that the patient no longer wishes his life to be terminated.
Katie Engelhart (The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die)
The fear brought on by a loved one’s dementia diagnosis is staggering. We’re on a bus ride down a congested street, and there’s no driver at the wheel. Here’s where we say that if you aren’t freaking out, you clearly don’t understand the situation. The future looms large. The most dire scenes play through our minds. We hardly know where to start. Much of our fear comes from feeling like we’re totally unprepared to take on the task ahead. Most of the time, we are totally unprepared. Have you ever watched someone else walk through dementia caregiving? Probably not.
Gail Weatherill (The Caregiver's Guide to Dementia: Practical Advice for Caring for Yourself and Your Loved One (Caregiver's Guides))
One of the things Mom’s journey with dementia has taught me is this: Life is in the small things, like the word “Amen”—a simple agreement, a yes to words prayed, and a statement claiming the promises of God. I’ve cried and begged for Mom not to have to go through this valley of loss, but it has come regardless. Now my one plea is that—in all that she has or will lose—she will never lose the love of God and her family. That is a truth worth saying “Amen” to.
Jenny Knipfer (Under the Weeping Willow (Sheltering Trees #2))
I like to remind people that dementia caregiving is a voluntary job. As harsh as it sounds, we always have the right to walk away. Nobody has to do anything. We may feel like we have no choice in the matter. But feelings aren’t facts. The fact is we all have the right to say no. I just want you to remember that there are other options. If it ever becomes too much, you don’t have to sacrifice yourself in the process. What is the value of the rescuer going down with the one in danger? Not to mention that you deserve to survive with a shred of sanity still intact. We caregivers are notorious for ignoring our own needs until we’re forced to take care of them. We go without sleep. We eat too much junk food or forget to eat at all. We don’t have time to exercise. We isolate ourselves because no one understands us anyway. We foster these habits at our own peril—and that of our loved one. The reality is that none of us is superhuman.
Gail Weatherill (The Caregiver's Guide to Dementia: Practical Advice for Caring for Yourself and Your Loved One (Caregiver's Guides))
When they say they are maintaining the status quo and keeping things balanced. They mean gatekeeping wealth , land, economy, and business. Keeping us poor, uneducated, unskilled, untrained, underpaid, undeveloped and unemployed. The very same people will be having dementia few years down the line and will be saying we are poor, stupid, thieves, criminals, useless, uneducated, unskilled and dangerous. How we like handouts and everything to be given to us for free. How we like complaining about everything. Forgetting that they had stolen everything from us. Our resources and opportunities. They had tipped the scale to favor them. They were busy sabotaging and tempering with our progress and development. They were busy meddling with our affairs, policies, politics, business, government, and economy.
De philosopher DJ Kyos
scientists say that being fat can lead to dementia. I have decided, however, to throw caution to the winds and proceed with my all-cream-cake regime. It seems to me that the fatter I get, the fewer places I will go and so the less I will have to remember.
Sandi Toksvig (The Chain Of Curiosity)
There’s an old saying, “between you and me and the lamppost.” Well, leave the lamppost and the extra person out of this.
Gary Joseph LeBlanc (Managing Alzheimer's and Dementia Behaviors)
Even though people experiencing dementia become unable to recount what has just happened, they still go through the experience—even without recall. The psychological present lasts about three seconds. We experience the present even when we have dementia. The emotional pain caused by callous treatment or unkind talk occurs during that period. The moods and actions of people with dementia are expressions of what they have experienced, whether they can still use language and recall, or not.
Judy Cornish (The Dementia Handbook: How to Provide Dementia Care at Home)
Violet wasn't sure what she was saying. Words fell out of her mouth with no mind and no malice.
Suzka (Wonders in Dementialand: An Artist's Intimate and Whimsical Account of Dementia, Memory Loss, Caregiving and Dancing Gypsies)
Faced with the Führer, Hácha caved in. He declared that the situation was very clear and that all resistance was madness. But it’s already two a.m., and he has only four hours to prevent the Czech people from defending themselves. According to Hitler, the German military machine is already on the march (true) and nothing can stop it (at least, no one seems very keen to try). Hácha must sign the surrender immediately and inform Prague. The choice Hitler is offering could not be simpler: either peace now, followed by a long collaboration between the two nations, or the total annihilation of Czechoslovakia. President Hácha, terrified, is left in a room with Göring and Ribbentrop. He sits at a table, the document before him. All he has to do now is sign it. The pen is in his hand, but his hand is trembling. The pen keeps stopping before it can touch the paper. In the absence of the Führer, who rarely stays to oversee such formalities, Hácha gets jumpy. “I can’t sign this,” he says. “If I sign the surrender, my people will curse me forever.” This is perfectly true. So Göring and Ribbentrop have to convince Hácha that it’s too late to turn back. This leads to a farcical scene where, according to witnesses, the two Nazi ministers literally chase Hácha around the table, repeatedly putting the pen back in his hand and ordering him to sign the bloody thing. At the same time, Göring yells continuously: if Hácha continues to refuse, half of Prague will be destroyed within two hours by the German air force … and that’s just for starters! Hundreds of bombers are waiting for the order to take off, and they will receive that order at 6:00 a.m. if the surrender is not signed. At this crucial moment, Hácha goes dizzy and faints. Now it’s the two Nazis who are terrified, standing there over his inert body. He absolutely must be revived: if he dies, Hitler will be accused of murdering him in his own office. Thankfully, there is an expert injecter in the house: Dr. Morell, who will later inject Hitler with amphetamines several times a day until his death—a medical regime that probably had some link with the Führer’s growing dementia. So Morell suddenly appears and sticks a syringe into Hácha, who wakes up. A telephone is shoved into his hand. Given the urgency of the situation, the paperwork can wait. Ribbentrop has taken care to install a special direct line to Prague. Gathering what is left of his strength, Hácha informs the Czech cabinet in Prague of what is happening in Berlin, and advises them to surrender. He is given another injection and taken back to see the Führer, who presents him once again with that wretched document. It is nearly four a.m. Hácha signs. “I have sacrificed the state in order to save the nation,” he believes. The imbecile. It’s as if Chamberlain’s stupidity was contagious …
Laurent Binet (HHhH)
I don’t want to wish my life away, but I’m starting to think that life is going to get really sweet when I’m seventy, and people will finally have to accept that I’m old enough to manage my own mind. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if someone said, “You say you don’t want children but you have early-onset dementia. You only think you don’t want kids and you only think that you are presiding over a conversation between your oxygen tank and your St. Francis of Assisi figurine. You’ll change your mind.
Jen Kirkman (I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids)
I mean, there’s a lot of other things I could do for money. I could sell autographed ECT machines or rhinestoned mood stabilizers or even Star Wars scented laxatives. But do I do that? Do I do a commercial on television to (attempt to) sell a medication while running around some random backyard with some rented golden retriever laughing and looking cured and totally amazed to be so worry-free while a voice comes on and says, “Reginol is not recommended for wayward fish or Libras with dementia. If you notice swelling in your femur or notice a subtle beam of backlight glowing northward from your anus or the anus of someone you went to school with, call your doctor immediately as this could be a symptom of hydrocephalus that could lead to roughhousing and misguided bloat. Reginol is not recommended for pregnant Nazis or yodelers over seventy. Reginol does not protect you from unpopularity or autism . . . ” All
Carrie Fisher (Shockaholic)
Her grandma Hilda was my grandma. I loved her dearly. After being married for 58 years, her husband died, and we all watched as she suffered. For ten years, Hilda cried herself to sleep at night. She was living on her own, proud and independent, but heart-achingly lonely, missing her life partner. We didn’t have the heart to put her in a home, yet with Hilda’s dementia worsening, Bonnie Pearl’s mom, Sharon, was determined to find her a home with the best possible care. We had heard that some retirement communities were pretty spectacular, and after weeks of looking, Sharon finally found a community that gave the Four Seasons a run for its money—this place is amazing. I always said I’d stay there, and I don’t say that about many places. So guess what happened to Grandmom after moving into her new digs? Forget that she traded up to a beautiful new apartment with modern amenities and 24-hour care. That was just the tip of the iceberg. More amazing than that, she began a second life! At 88 years old, she transformed into a new woman and fell in love again. A 92-year-old Italian captured her heart. (“I don’t let him under my shirt yet, but he tries all the time,” she said with a grin.) They had four beautiful years together before he passed away, and I kid you not, at his funeral, she met her next beau. Her last decade was filled with a quality of life she never could have envisioned. She found happiness, joy, love, and friendship again. It was an unexpected last chapter of her life and a reminder that love is the ultimate wealth. It can show up unexpected anytime, anywhere—and it is never too late.
Anthony Robbins (MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom (Tony Robbins Financial Freedom))
Dr. Robert hess says that Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia, which is a disorder that slowly dies off in the brain cells. The cause is not known yet, but certain genetic defects are clearly linked to developing this disease.
drroberthess
As I watched people with advanced dementia sing and worship, I could not help but be caught up in the deep mystery of what it might mean to worship Jesus when you have forgotten who he is. Holding the hand of someone with advanced dementia and coming to realize that they are not someone who “used to be,” but someone who is important in the present and indeed has a vocation that will lead them into the future was, to say the least, humbling, challenging, and quite beautiful.
John Swinton (Becoming Friends of Time: Disability, Timefullness, and Gentle Discipleship (Studies in Religion, Theology, and Disability))
Former Chief Neurologist at Miriam Hospital, says Mellor's book "...offers a wealth of information for caregivers," while "the mixture of prose and poetry is refreshing.
Dr. Norman Gordon
Berenson wrote that Lilly told its sales representatives to suggest doctors prescribe Zyprexa to older patients with symptoms of dementia, even though this was an unapproved use. I have learned that staff at nursing homes like prescribing Zyprexa and other neuroleptics to their patients because it disables them so much they aren't any trouble; in many cases, they can't even get out of bed anymore. Worse, Zyprexa doubles the death rate for the elderly. As Mr. Berenson reported, Zyprexa carries a prominent ("black box") warning that it increases the risk of death in the elderly. People tell me that when their parents die after being given a neuroleptic such as Zyprexa, the doctor says something along the lines of, "Well, your mother was old." I have also heard stories from people who tell me their parent dramatically improved once they were taken off Zyprexa or other neuroleptics.
Jim Gottstein (The Zyprexa Papers)
Dr. Gael Chételat, the coauthor of the study, echoing what I’ve been saying for many years. “Looking after your mental health is . . . not only important for people’s health and well-being in the short term, but it could also impact your eventual risk of dementia.
Daniel G. Amen (You, Happier: The 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type)
In the US, there are apparently more than 2 million cases of elder abuse each year in nursing homes; one in ten old people will experience some form of abuse. People with dementia are much more likely to be abused than those without it. What's more, elder abuse is probably the most under-reported form of violence in the country. It's the same depressing story in the UK, where the care system is under severe pressure, with many experts saying it is disintegrating; home-care workers are paid paltry amounts of money to spend tiny amounts of time in the homes of the old and vulnerable. There have been over 23,000 allegations of home-care abuse in the last three years - which means there must be more, because often the people who are being abused can't tell tales (which, of course, is partly why they are being abused). Many care homes are understaffed and operating within a punitive, impossible budget; the tens of thousands of allegations of abuse over the last three years include, neglect, physical abuse, psychological abuse and sexual abuse. All over the world, in poor countries and rich ones, hundreds and thousands of old and vulnerable people live the last part of their life in fear and distress, in loneliness and in sorrow.
Nicci Gerrard
When someone says, “Trust your gut!” they are referring to the vagus nerve’s keen ability to sense when something is off even before you consciously recognize the problem. This advice serves us well unless we are chronically unwell; then something is off all the time. This causes you to lose your intuitive edge. Instead of being in tune, you feel threatened, think negatively, and act defensively.
Jennifer Heisz (Move The Body, Heal The Mind: Overcome Anxiety, Depression, and Dementia and Improve Focus, Creativity, and Sleep)
When you’re working with dementia patients, life is hard for both of you, but at least you don’t have to keep coming up with new repartee. And I really don’t say that to make light of the situation. I say it to find light in the situation, which I honestly think is a favor to all involved.
Catherine Ryan Hyde (So Long, Chester Wheeler)
Carl finds it disgusting, this optimism. "I have only to talk about a meal," he says, "and you're radiant!" It's a fact. The mere thought of a meal -- another meal -- rejuvenates me. A meal! That means something to go on -- a few solid hours of work, an erection possibly. I don't deny it. I have health, good, solid, animal health. The only thing that stands between me and a future is a meal, another meal. As for Carl, he's not himself these days. He's upset, his nerves are jangled. He says he's ill, and I believe him, but I don't feel badly about it. I can't. In fact, it makes me laugh. And that offends him, of course. Everything wounds him -- my laughter, my hunger, my persistence, my insouciance, everything. One day he wants to blow his brains out because he can't stand this lousy hole of Europe any more; the next day he talks of going to Arizona "where they look you square in the eye." "Do it!" I say. "Do one thing or the other, you bastard, but don't try to cloud my healthy eye with your melancholy breath!" But that's just it! In Europe one gets used to doing nothing. You sit on your ass and whine all day. You get contaminated. You rot. Fundamentally Carl is a snob, an aristocratic little prick who lives in a dementia praecox92 kingdom all his own. "I hate Paris!" he whines. "All these stupid people playing cards all day... look at them! And this writing! What's the use of putting words together? I can be a writer without writing, can't I? What does it prove if I write book? What do we want with books anyway?There are too many books already...
Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer (Tropic, #1))
What is sensory integration therapy? This form of occupational therapy helps children and adults with SPD (sensory processing disorder) use all their senses together. These are the senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. Sensory integration therapy is claimed to help people with SPD respond to sensory inputs such as light, sound, touch, and others; and change challenging or repetitive behaviours. Someone in the family may have trouble receiving and responding to information through their senses. This is a condition called sensory processing disorder (SPD). These people are over-sensitive to things in their surroundings. This disorder is commonly identified in children and with conditions like autism spectrum disorder. The exact cause of sensory processing disorder is yet to be identified. However, previous studies have proven that over-sensitivity to light and sound has a strong genetic component. Other studies say that those with sensory processing conditions have abnormal brain activity when exposed simultaneously to light and sound. Treatment for sensory processing disorder in children and adults is called sensory integration therapy. Therapy sessions are play-oriented for children, so they should be fun and playful. This may include the use of swings, slides, and trampolines and may be able to calm an anxious child. In addition, children can make appropriate responses. They can also perform more normally. SPD can also affect adults Someone who struggles with SPD should consider receiving occupational therapy, which has an important role in identifying and treating sensory integration issues. Occupational therapists are health professionals using different therapeutic approaches so that people can do every work they need to do, inside and outside their homes. Through occupational therapy, affected individuals are helped to manage their immediate and long-term sensory symptoms. Sensory integration therapy for adults, especially for people living with dementia or Alzheimer's disease, may use everyday sounds, objects, foods, and other items to rouse their feelings and elicit positive responses. Suppose an adult is experiencing agitation or anxiety. In that case, soothing music can calm them, or smelling a scent familiar to them can help lessen their nervous excitement and encourage relaxation, as these things can stimulate their senses. Seniors with Alzheimer's/Dementia can regain their ability to connect with the world around them. This can help improve their well-being overall and quality of life. What Are The Benefits of Sensory Integration Therapy Sensory integration treatment offers several benefits to people with SPD: * efficient organisation of sensory information. These are the things the brain collects from one's senses - smell, touch, sight, etc. * Active involvement in an exploration of the environment. * Maximised ability to function in recreational and other daily activities. * Improved independence with daily living activities. * Improved performance in the home, school, and community. * self-regulations. Affected individuals get the ability to understand and manage their behaviours and understand their feelings about things that happen around them. * Sensory systems modulation. If you are searching for an occupational therapist to work with for a family with a sensory processing disorder, check out the Mission Walk Therapy & Rehabilitation Centre. The occupational therapy team of Mission Walk uses individualised care plans, along with the most advanced techniques, so that patients can perform games, school tasks, and other day-to-day activities with their best functional skills. Call Mission Walk today for more information or a free consultation on sensory integration therapy. Our customer service staff will be happy to help.
Missionwalk - Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation
Stage 7: Very severe cognitive decline (severe or late-stage Alzheimer’s disease) In the final stage of this disease, individuals lose the ability to respond to their environment, to carry on a conversation, and, eventually, to control their movements. They may still say words or phrases. At this stage, individuals need help with much of their daily personal care, including eating or using the toilet. They may also lose the ability to smile, to sit without support, and to hold their heads up. Reflexes become abnormal. Muscles grow rigid. Swallowing is impaired.
Laura Anthony (The Most Important Lesson: What My Mother Taught Me That Will Change Alzheimer's and Dementia Care Forever)
Contents Beginnings 1. Facing Up 2. Getting Older 3. The Brain, the Mind and the Self 4. Memory and Forgetting 5. The Diagnosis 6. Shame 7. The Carers 8. Connecting through the Arts 9. Home 10. The Later Stages 11. Hospitals 12. At the End 13. Saying Goodbye 14. Death
Nicci Gerrard (What Dementia Teaches Us About Love)
In a world where the keywords for salvation are stop, return and regress, old people are extremely valuable. Man has been formed in such a way that the little wisdom that certain individuals possess tends to gradually accumulate in the course of the years. One of the insanities perpetuated by the frenzied times we are living in is the trivialisation and marginalisation of the elderly. Only a small percentage of elderly people suffers from illnesses leading to dementia: most people are certainly wiser at the age of ninety than they are at that of eighty-nine. The young human being will always be an unripe fruit and crude specimen: both wisdom and sense of responsibility tend to develop in one’s old age (if they were ever there in the first place, that is), while irrelevancies fade away. If the minimum age requirement for all the decision makers of mankind were, say, eighty, much would already have been achieved. Many harmful delusions would have been avoided, and destruction would now be advancing at a far slower pace.
Pentti Linkola (Can Life Prevail?)
Do you remember the question?” That provoked him. Sheldon turned to Lars, who was attentive. “Watch this.” “Number one. Getting people to repeat their own questions forces them to figure out what they’re asking. If you’re not willing to ask a question three times, then you don’t really want to know the answer. Number two, you have brought me to Norway. Nothing’s familiar. I can’t become lost in familiar places. I just become lost. Number three, I don’t speak Norwegian, so I can’t follow any directions. If I understood . . . that would be demented. Number four, I don’t know of any half-intelligent, self-aware person who, if they give it a moment’s thought, doesn’t find time, people, or places all highly disorienting. In fact, what is there to disorient us other than time, people, or places? And for the three-part finale, I say this. I have no idea what it means to be neglectful of personal safety. As measured against what? Under what conditions? As judged by whom? I’ve sailed into a storm of tracer bullets, face first, on the Yellow Sea at dawn. Was I neglectful? I married a woman and stayed with her until the end of her life. You call that safe? As for hygiene, I brush my teeth and shower daily. The only one who thinks I’m dirty is someone who thinks I don’t belong, and so is probably an anti-Semite, and you can tell him Sheldon Horowitz says so. And nutrition? I’m eighty-two and I’m alive. “How did I do, Lars?” “Better than I could have done, Sheldon.” Rhea remembers the story. But she says to Lars, in front of Sigrid, “He was lucid. He has powerful reasoning skills. He was showing off.” Lars shrugs. “It worked on me.” “OK, maybe it isn’t dementia per se. But he’s odd. Really odd. And he’s increasingly talking to the dead.” Even as she speaks, she accepts
Derek B. Miller (Norwegian by Night (Sigrid Ødegård #1))
A doctor might say, “There’s a chance your mother could recover from her pneumonia if we put her on the breathing tube and send her to the ICU.” A chance? That sounds great! A more accurate statement might be something like this: “We could put your mother in the ICU on a breathing tube. I don’t recommend that, because she will suffer, without likely benefit. The tube is so uncomfortable she will have to be sedated, so she can’t communicate with you. She may get restrained so she doesn’t pull out the tube. If she gets through this pneumonia, she will be weaker than before, and more likely to get sick again. This pneumonia signals she is in the final phase of dementia. I recommend that you consider hospice care and a do-not-hospitalize order, focusing on comfort care without the pain and trauma of repeated transfers as she grows weaker.” A family member will have a clearer picture of how this treatment fits into the larger scenario of old age, dementia, and frailty.
Tia Powell (Dementia Reimagined: Building a Life of Joy and Dignity from Beginning to End)
Don’t ask questions. 2. Learn from them as the experts on their disability. 3. Always agree with everything they say, never interrupting them.
Oliver James (Contented Dementia: 24-hour Wraparound Care for Lifelong Well-being)
For many reasons, the church at large has been absent in speaking about the struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. The psychological components of Alzheimer’s can frighten pastors and the general church body. After all, how can you minister to a person who doesn’t remember who you are, who doesn’t appear to understand what you’re saying? It hardly seems worth the time when they won’t even remember your visit. Many pastors feel ill-equipped to address the needs of people with dementia.
Benjamin T. Mast (Second Forgetting: Remembering the Power of the Gospel during Alzheimer’s Disease)
It's like she's the living dead,' says Pauline. 'A long time ago, I lost her. I talk, and there's no reaction. Sometimes, when she laughs, or something in the tone of her voice - then I recognise the way we were twenty years ago. You fill in the gaps and the memories. Then she leaves again. You say goodbye all the time.
Nicci Gerrard
The new dementia is for everybody,” Horseshoe says. “In the article, they interviewed a child who had it. She couldn’t remember what age she was. My mom thinks metals have something to do with it—every couple of days, she warns me not to drink from aluminum cans. When she and my dad visit my place, they’ll spend the whole time emptying beers from the cans into a big pitcher. My roommate was pissed.
Alexandra Kleeman (Something New Under the Sun)
It's hard to say which is preferable, the mild dementia and tripping on airplane stairs combined with a thousand pardons that somehow happen to be your own son, or the megalomania of joining Canada mixed with a sex-freak obsession... Or simply the desire to destroy all the Nazis in neighboring Ukraine! The world turned out to be a little Madhouse... The Head of the Men's Ward in a Psychiatric Clinic Rosen Markov Bulgaria 2025
Росен Марков