Okay, so in just a few days, Ming and I will be talking about how we have dealt with Anthony’s Dementia, including the nursing home decision. I have prepared a talk that mostly deals with the positives of our experience. It is, after all, a conference about happiness.
The trouble is that our own experience is possibly unique and may not resemble other people’s experiences of Dementia. So I am probably going to have to be very careful not to generalise, to pay respect to those carers who are dealing with personality changes, behavioural difficulties, and the horribleness of a loved one not recognising another loved one.
It is nearly six years since we finally (mutually) made the nursing home decision and, yes, the first year was a blank of heartbreak. But, since that horrible first year, I have made the nursing home my home too.
Today:
Me: Ants, I so love your big nose!
Anthony: You just want to see me naked, Jules!
jmgoyder 
HI Julie… from a daughter whose mother in a home with dementia who lost the ability to speak, I offer a couple of thoughts. I decided to not assume she didn’t understand anything, but that I couldn’t know what she did, so I tried to talk ‘to’ her about anything and everything that I thought she might be interested in or just to talk. Sometime I turned on her favourite program and (I) would chat ‘to’ her about the show.
If a person is dealing with someone who has dementia and totally just speaks about things that don’t make sense…. I really can’t speak with any authority, except if it were me, I think I’d try to help them and maybe correct what they say.. not argumentatively but just in a quiet way… But since that’s not what I had to deal with except in the early stages of Mom’s dementia, when she would say something that even she knew was wrong, I’d help her.
Anyway, just some thoughts .. Love Diane
Oh Diane thank you so much for this wisdom!
as you say Julie, every individual case is different
there is so much humor and love and heart in all of this, jules. hugs
I love that you and Ming are doing this together.
What a splendid reply!
Good luck! I’m sure it will go well.
Priceless 😀 😀
Just as there are wonderful popular people with a great sense of humour who are extremely bright and optimistic about life, do you think that they still carry their old personality traits into the various stages of Dementia?
Are there any dour, solemn, continually grumbling, negative patients at the home?
Or once they get to the stage of not recognising people, do they all become similar?
Do bright, happy, cheerful carers or nurses make an obvious difference to the patients?
I have to admit knowing very little about this health condition. I do know a little about nursing homes in general as my mother spend several years working as a cook in a variety of homes and she told me about the patients (and nurses).
smiling. well you know what they say… big nose, big… 😉 ❤
Diana xo
HaHaHa, broke my toe and am kinda grouchy so needed the laugh. Thanks!
Thanks for the grins through the situation. Did you take your beach walk?
Thanks for given me the biggest laugh of my day, Julie. Ha ha – who nose? I can hardly bare it! 🙂
I’m sure you and Ming will be fantastic. Your down-to-earth compassion and honesty will touch everyone there.
As long as you talk from the ‘I’ place, of your experience, you will be fine. People will relate the pieces of their experiences to yours, as they match. I have been with you many these years and you are always teach me new ways to look at the Parkinson’s situation.