our girl

You call her "our girl".

She is your Personal Care Assistant/ Chef/ Nurse/Physical therapist/ Friend/ housekeeper/chauffeur/ The grand-daughter you never had.
Her presence has recently turned your life around.
You are cleaner.  You are happier.  You seem more relaxed.  You are nicer.
Every day you tell me how much you like her.

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we have had this same conversation many times:

"What is her name again?", you ask me.

"Sherrey", I say.

"What?"

"Sherrey", I say again.

"Sherrey?", you ask.

"Yes, Sherrey."

"how do you spell that?"

"S- H - E- R- R- E -Y".

"Sherrey?  Why can't I remember that?", you ask.

"We could write it down so you just have to look at it to remember it", I offer.

"Help me think of something else to remember it", you say.

"Sherrey Berry", I offer. "Sherry, like the wine", I try again.

"do you know where she is from?", you ask.

I tell you where she is from.

"Ok. Yes, I was just checking if you knew."

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"We go for our walk, and it always seems to end with picking up the mail", you tell me.

"She has a thing for my mail", you muse, "but today there wasn't hardly anything".

You are lucky, I say.  All I get is mostly junk mail.

Little do you know, Sherrey is acting on my instructions to help keep you out of trouble in the building.  I have also put your name, address and phone number on every possible do not call, do not solicit list there is, and more than once.  I also do whatever I can to take revenge on the junk mail solicitors.

http://seniorfraud.blogspot.com/2014/09/stop-junk-mail-and-how-to-get-revenge.html

We are trying to blend in, not stir up controversy, because you want to stay here, remember???


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empathy restored?

What a surprise yesterday when you called (which included dialing the phone all by yourself) to see how I was feeling, after I had been out sick for 4 days.

You are turning into a nice old man.

To God be the Glory.

The loss of empathy had been so apparent in the last 5+ years, I didn't expect to ever see it again.  During that time, if I got sick, or if something bad happened to me, it didn't faze you. You offered no condolences, didn't follow up, didn't give back anything.

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Loss of empathy is a common early symptom of specific forms of dementia, including the kind I think you have, which also included as earlier symptoms,  poor judgment, loss of insight.

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how much of this improvement in empathy is due to the fact you are getting coffee every morning since we hired a personal care attendant? Or is it due to the stabilizing impact/ improvement in all aspects of your well-being due to having the perfect  personal care attendant, who comes for only 2 hours/day?

My conclusion would be that 2 hours/day of kind focused support, starting in the morning,  can make a huge difference in maintaining "independence", and regaining empathy (humanity),  for a person with dementia (who would otherwise require assisted living or memory care, assuming they aren't wandering at night and they have sufficient mobility to not require more care)

For those seeking a cost-effective elder care solution, I can highly recommend this as the lst step.  It takes the pressure off the family and keeps the person more "independent" of family as well. It is far less expensive than an assisted living facility or nursing home, and YOU are the boss.

there are 2 caveats:
1.   we switch the appliance electricity on and off (discretely), so that you can't use the stove/ oven or microwave, unassisted.
2.  I wouldn't have dared to hire an assistant (for fear of their safety) in the earlier years when you were more aggressively misbehaving.  This is working now only due to your frailty and further memory loss.  Take home message: timing is everything.

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To God be the Glory.