A Day in the Life

For my fellow dementia caregivers--a band of dedicated wives, husbands, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, and friends, who toil mostly behind the scenes with little credit or thanks, doing it out of a sense of rightness and, if truth be told, out of love. This blog post is for you. 

A day in the life of a dementia caregiver has three distinct components: you physically care for your loved one in whatever ways he or she needs, you anticipate, and you remember. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But it's really very challenging. 

Many people wonder what you do when you care for a loved one with dementia, and the answer will vary from caregiver to caregiver. Some of us are busy helping with bathing, feeding, and walking, but many of us, especially those of us dealing with behavior variant Frontotemporal Dementia (bvFTD), also spend time dealing with bizarre, unpleasant behaviors. Usually that means we are cleaning up messes after they have happened because your bvFTD loved one can think up things to do you cannot imagine. 

A few years back, my youngest son and I had to apologize to store employees because Gordon, my formerly courteous husband, would fly into a rage at helpful, unsuspecting employees and swear at them using the "F" word. Then, of course, there are the money problems. 

Families caring for a bvFTD loved one often have suffered devastating financial losses resulting from the loved one's poor executive function and choices, which means the caregiver has the added stress of figuring out how to keep a house over their heads and food on the table. Scary.

In addition to the physical caregiving, there's the anticipation factor. It's all about anticipating what's going to be needed next. It's about helping with minutiae, the hundreds of things you and I do each day without thinking about, on autopilot, but the person with dementia can no longer do without help. For instance, I loosen the jars and caps I think my husband might use that day to alleviate his frustration because his grip is now weak. I put items he might use in exactly the same spot so that he can find them. And I've recently begun to help him with dressing. He's tries to put shirts on upside down and gets all tangled up, and then sometimes he needs help with buttons. We caregivers never know what the next day will bring. We may have several calm days where we are lulled into a routine, and, then, bam, something new pops up. As you might suspect, we don't get much sleep, always half listening, waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop.

Oh, and then there are the doors being left open. Whenever Gordon goes outside, he leaves the door open, and he often leaves it open when he comes back inside, or he closes it with a beloved pet outside and doesn't hear it scratching or whimpering or meowing to get inside. I'm often searching for my very frightened cat or letting in my very puzzled dog, neither of whom understands what has happened. Dementia is hard on pets too.

Perhaps the most difficult job of a dementia caregiver is being the rememberer, the caretaker for the memories of the time before your loved one developed dementia. Somehow, in the midst of irritation, frustration, anger, loneliness, despair, resentment, pain, and confusion, an array of unwanted emotions that wash over us when least expected, we have to keep enough perspective to not let the spouse, parent, child, or friend that we once deeply loved and cherished be lost to us and to the world. We have to tell the first part of our loved ones' stories in addition to the last part. As Gwydion says in Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron, "so shall I honor Morgant for what he used to be." Replace Morgant's name with our loved ones' names and honer them for what they used to be. Our loved ones did not choose this dreadful disease, so we must find ways to remember and honor our loved ones' lives before they developed dementia.

Wow, all that in a dementia caregiver's day, and I didn't even touch on the driving issue and taking the keys away, or the fears and reality of abandonment by family and friends who choose to be in denial or are scared or don't want to be bothered. And how about getting reliable respite time for oneself? Ah, there's always more to write, isn't there?

Big hugs to all my fellow caregivers,

Kate

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