He Forgot She Was His Wife -- So He Proposed To Her Again

 From the Washington Post, a tender love story about a man who forgot he was married to his wife and proposed to her, and about the community that came together to give them a wedding. 

She didn’t anticipate that the “for better or worse” part of their wedding vows would be put to the test about seven years later, she said....In January, her husband’s mind began declining at a faster pace. And so 20 years after their romance began, with her husband’s recent proposal, it seemed like perfect timing to renew their vows, she said.

Movie About Compassion as Medicine for Dementia: It Is Not Over Yet

"It is Not Over Yet" is a documentary about a Danish memory care facility that treats residents with compaassion -- nature, cake, and above all, listening to them. 

Losing Cissie, Saving Myself: The Perils of Caring for My Wife Through Her Memory Loss

Peter Barnet's poignant memoir of caring for his wife -- and himself -- as her memory fades is Losing Cissie, Saving Myself: The Perils of Caring for My Wife Through Her Memory Loss.

"If you don’t cry, learn to. If you don’t laugh, learn to. Tears and laughter are the best tools to manage stress and win through”

SUPERNOVA Trailer (2020) Colin Firth, Stanley Tucci Drama About Memory Loss

AC/DC Pays Tribute to their Band Member with Dementia -- and To the Power of Music

#Unforgettableriffs - 89fm (english) from Agência Africa on Vimeo.

A Play To Help Conversations and Understanding About Dementia

An actor sits in an armchair on a makeshift stage. People wander in, some elderly, many middle-aged and a few who look to be in their 20s. The actor, partly covered in a blanket, rocks slightly, staring at and wringing her hands. “Puh … puh …. puh,” she says. It’s Connie. This is no ordinary theatre. This is Newbury library at 7pm on a Wednesday. Some, oblivious to the waiting play, talk and exchange books. Most stay to watch the performance.

Emily, Connie’s daughter, appears when there’s a full audience of around 35 people. “Hi mum, it’s me,” she says. Kissing Connie on the head, she talks about her first TV cooking show and looks through a large book. “There’s a recipe of your rock cakes in here,” Emily says. “Here we are, Connie’s rock cakes … gosh 1987.” It’s Connie’s memory book. She has dementia.

The play, Connie’s Colander, follows Emily’s visit to her mother, a retired domestic science teacher who has Alzheimer’s. As they reminisce while Emily explains how she’s bringing her mother’s recipes to the show, we see how their relationship has evolved during Emily’s life and Connie’s illness.

When the play’s the thing to help us talk about Alzheimer’s

Laws and Care Facilities Thwart Wishes of Dementia Patients

“It’s not something that I am willing to endure,” she said. “I don’t want my life prolonged beyond the point where I’m participating in life.”

But when Saran submitted the document to her New York continuing care retirement community, Kendal at Ithaca, where she has spent more than $500,000 to live, officials there said they could not honor her wishes.

Diagnosed with dementia, she documented her wishes for the end. Then her retirement home said no....

It’s a cruel quandary for Saran and other Americans who have turned to dementia directives that have been created in recent years. Even when people document their choices in these directives — while they still have the ability to do so — no guarantee exists that those instructions will be honored, said Stanley Terman, a California psychiatrist who advises patients on end-of-life decisions.

Elizabeth is Missing: Trailer | BBC Trailers

The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders: A Tokyo Restaurant Where All the Servers Are People Living with Dementia

"All of our servers are people living with dementia. They may, or may not, get your order right."



The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders

Playing Along With My Dad’s Alzheimer’s Confusion

It is so tempting to tell the truth to our loved ones who are struggling with memory loss, even if it seems cruel to tell them sad or scary news over and over. Increasingly, health professionals and family members are meeting dementia patients where they are.

Lisa Romeo writes in Playing Along With My Dad’s Alzheimer’s Confusion:

Deep down I suppose I sensed there was no value in explaining to him that this was not a hotel, especially because hotels, after all, were places that had always meant refuge and pleasure; places he’d felt comfortable. Hotels were where he’d always been fit enough to swim and smart enough to play baccarat. They were places of beauty, indulgence, and order. I knew in my heart that it was not my duty to make him understand — as if I could — that this was a hospital, that he was broken and sick, and that the only “activities” here were uncomfortable and undignified. What good would it do, I reasoned, to replace his imagined “lousy hotel” conversation with one that was more realistic?

...

Personally though, to have hope was about finding a moment — many moments as it turned out — when Dad and I could meet each other on mutually comforting, historically familiar ground. Every time he talked about hotels, I remembered all the lovely days we’d spent in suites and lobbies, at poolside or white-tablecloth restaurants, from Vienna to the Virgin Islands. When he talked of booking a flight or hiring a limo, it busted open the shared vault of family history we’d made together wandering the world. If that past world of ours could serve as a salve for him, in the midst of his psychic turmoil and physical pain, I was more than willing to follow.

What is a good death? How my mother planned hers is a good road map for me.

The best part of this story, aside from the never-often-enough reminder to communicate our EOL wishes, is the sweet detail of the dementia patient who believed she was the caretaker of another patient.

Most of us avoid thinking about death, which makes a good one harder to come by. Two-thirds of citizens in the United States do not have a living will. Although most Americans say they want to die at home, few make plans to do so, and half will die in hospitals or nursing homes instead — a situation Katy Butler, author of “The Art of Dying Well,” attributes in part to our “culture-wide denial of death.”

Even healthy people need a living will, but many don’t want to think about it.

Specifying what a good death means is especially important for dementia patients, who will lose the ability to express their own wishes as the disease progresses. In the early stages, patients have time to reflect and clarify what they do and do not want to happen at the end of their lives. But these options dry up quickly in later stages.

This means that most families are left with a terrible series of guesses about both medical interventions and everyday care. Are patients still enjoying eating, or do they just open their mouths as a primitive reflex, as one expert put it, unconnected to the ability to know what to do with food? What kinds of extraordinary resuscitation measures would they want medical staff to undertake?

What is a good death? How my mother planned hers is a good road map for me.

A Man Cares for his Wife with Dementia -- With the Help of His Girlfriend

Design/cooking/lifetyle expert B. Smith has dementia. The woman once called "the black Martha Stewart" once presided over an empire that included restaurants and magazines, but now she has dementia. Her husband still cares for her lovingly and keeps her fans up to date through social media. But some of them are upset because he has a girlfriend, who helps him in caring for her.

“We were friends,” Alex said. “I didn’t want to go out with a married man.” Plus, she’d socialized with B. at charity events. But when Dan invited her to breakfast at a popular hotel with B., she accepted.

Finally, she saw. “This is not a man cheating on his wife,” she told herself. In the middle of breakfast, Alex helped B. to the bathroom.

Alex had a nurturing spirit. And she saw the same in him. “What I admire about him,” she said, “is that he takes care of her.” ....Despite the online response, those who know Dan and B. defend the relationship. “Anybody that would judge Dan knows nothing about the disease and the toll it takes” on a marriage, Schnayerson said. “If you can find a companion who can help you get through that, all power to you.”

Dana also pointed out that her father has not abandoned B. by any measure. “She’s in this house. She’s here every day,” she said.

And, on many days, so is Alex. “If I can be compassionate to her,” Alex said, her voice breaking, “if I can do anything for her, it makes me feel good. If it is giving her something to drink, or making her something to eat — she loves to eat — I feel good.”

Lifestyle guru B. Smith has Alzheimer’s. Her husband has a girlfriend. Her fans aren’t having it.

He Forgot They Were Married -- So He Proposed to His Wife Again

A man with dementia forgot that he was married. So he fell in love with his wife all over again, proposed to her, and insisted that they get married.

“There’s been a lot of sadness and a lot of frustration,” Linda Joyce said. “And despite all the fogginess, today has been pure joy.”

Husband with Alzheimer’s forgot he was married to his wife of 38 years. He proposed, and they married again.

Living with Dementia -- Making the Most of the Moment

A woman diagnosed with dementia has made sure that all the legal paperwork has been taken care of, participates in an online support group, and has created a "dementia daze" blog to help others.

A key to prolonging independence, participants told her, is to recognize the triggers that aggravate her symptoms and to adjust her routine to head them off. One strategy: Because noise in a grocery store can cause confusion, Mrs. Scherrer shops in the early morning, when the store is quieter.

Most important, she said, the group taught her she “can still live a meaningful, happy life, at least for now.”

To that end, Mrs. Scherrer, of Oley, Pa., writes a blog that provides advice on living with dementia, and she is a mentor to others with cognitive impairments. As a member of the advisory board of the Dementia Action Alliance, an advocacy group, she speaks at conferences of policymakers and neurologists, suggesting ways they can arrange for better, and more sensitive, care.

Mrs. Scherrer has bad days when she is “crying because I don’t know where I am,” she said, but “I have a passion now, and that passion keeps me going.”

Leading an Active Life With a Diagnosis of Dementia

Dementia: Letting Memory-Impaired Patients Maintain Some Agency

From William Haseltine's thoughtful series of articles about caring for people with dementia:

allowing residents to sleep, eat, bathe, and congregate when and how they want has ripple effects across the organization.

“If you let people sleep as long as they like, they are far happier when we help them up out of bed,” says Ms. Mitchell. “We need fewer staff when the resident is not angry that we woke them up and are forcing them out of bed. It is the same for eating, showering, and all other activities.”
...

Caregivers and family members often take control away from people living with dementia in a misguided attempt to protect the person from physical harm. Mitigating risk for people living with dementia in long term care centers and at home is an important aspect of care that cannot be overlooked.

Making a Dementia Patient Laugh

Dani Klein Modisett writes in the AARP Bulletin about hiring a comedian to spend time with her mother, who was struggling with memory loss.

I knew there were senior services that provide companionship — programs with names like Visiting Angels, Senior Helpers and Good Company Senior Care. But I wanted something else for my 84-year-old mother. I wanted someone who could make her laugh. I was a professional comedian for years, but when she looks in my eyes, she just sees a daughter she can’t communicate with anymore. I took to social media. “Looking for a funny person with an interest in geriatrics. Paying gig. Part time,” I posted....A comedian. What a perfect fit for this job. Who better to be in the moment, to draw someone out and, after years of dealing with hecklers, be undaunted by the volatility of a person in the grip of Alzheimer’s, a brain disease with no known cure that affects some 5.7 million Americans?

They paused to catch their breath. “You want some water?” Sue asked my mother, holding the glass toward her. She nodded. Sue held it up to her lips. I turned my head, catching a tear with my finger — not so much from sadness, but from one of those Oprah “Aha!” moments. It suddenly became clear that when rational thought, memory and language are gone, the only thing we have is the present moment. And the greatest gift you can give anyone in this state is to do your best to fill the moment with laughter.

BBC RemArc - how our archives can help people with dementia - BBC R&D

"Triggering intact memories and stimulating conversations about them can improve the relationship between people with dementia and their families and carers, which in turn can improve the level of care they receive and their quality of life. A few years ago, we were approached by Dr. Norman Alm from the Computing department of the University Of Dundee.  Dr. Alm’s team had spent years researching how technology could be used to support people with dementia.  As Dr Alm explained the concept of reminiscence work and its benefits, we realised that the BBC’s archives could be put to good use in this area, if delivered through an appropriate medium. We agreed to work with Dr. Alm to design and build an online reminiscence archive, using material from the our archives. My team in BBC Archive Development wanted to achieve a number of things with RemArc. Firstly, and most importantly, to use archive material to benefit those of our audience members who have dementia, their families and their carers. We are confident that amongst the 1500 items from our archives that are available on RemArc, there will be something that triggers a reminiscence for everyone."

What did we learn from our test users?

Firstly, we learned that using archive material to trigger memories and reminiscences really does work. During the sessions many memories were triggered, sparking great reminiscences and conversations, and seemingly enhancing the relationships between people with dementia, others in the groups and their carers. It was also notable that a large number of people said that they remembered more about their past than they thought they would.

Secondly, we learned that the online, tablet based approach and the interaction design we used seems to work well for people with dementia. However, several improvements were suggested, which are outlined in more detail later in this blog.

Thirdly, we learned that reminiscence can be very enjoyable, engaging and, quite simply, fun. During most of the testing sessions, which were supposed to last around 20 minutes, I had to ask the groups to return the tablets after an hour, as they were so engaged with RemArc, and having so many great reminiscences!

BBC RemArc - how our archives can help people with dementia - BBC R&D

Modern Love Podcast: Alzheimer's Story "Magically Interrupted"

“Well, there is a theory,” he said, interrupting, “that people with Alzheimer’s heal themselves of their diseases. Because they forget they have them.”

...

For my grandfather and me, having to witness JoAnn’s Alzheimer’s had been agonizing — like watching “The Miracle Worker” backward. Every day seemed accompanied by a new limitation. But for my grandmother, the disease had seemed liberating. For the first time in all the years I’d known her, she seemed truly happy.

Imagine: to be freed from your memory, to have every awful thing that ever happened to you wiped away — and not just your past, but your worries about the future, too. Because with no sense of time or memory, past and future cease to exist, along with all sense of loss and regret. Not to mention grudges and hurt feelings, arguments and embarrassments.

Beth Malone on Her Father's Dementia

PBS: Alzheimer's: Every Minute Counts

Alzheimer’s: Every Minute Counts, premiering January 25, 2017, at 10pm ET, is an urgent wake-up call about the national threat posed by Alzheimer’s disease.