Your Custom Text Here
If you’re feeling old, you're in good company and apparently a lot of it. New statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau show that for the first time in U.S. history, older people are projected to outnumber children. And they expect it to happen in a little over a decade.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017 National Population Projections, the year 2030 will mark an important demographic turning point in the country’s history.
Stephanie Brada reads the Henry Charles Beeching poem Going Down Hill on a Bicycle to a group of residents at a care home. They read along with her, some mouthing the words, others silently following the print-outs on their laps.
Could the Montessori method help people with dementia?
Read more
“Michael, did you ever have a bike?” Brada asks one of the men sitting across from her.
“Yes,” he replies. “I rode it to work.”
A flat-screen TV glowed like a hearth fire in the darkened family room where Ron and Joy Pott huddled cozily on a sofa watching a Kentucky-Alabama college basketball game. Occasionally, their peace was interrupted by the announcer’s shrieking.
“Dick Vitale can just drive you crazy,” Joy Pott said, reaching for the remote.
Later on that raw Saturday, the Malvern couple switched to Premier League soccer – a sport Ron played in college – then to the Valspar golf championship, in which Tiger Woods was making a run. Finally, that night, they tuned in to the event they were most avidly anticipating, Villanova vs. Providence men’s college basketball in the Big East Tournament championship game.
Celina Raddatz quit her job at a nursing home in 2014 when she realized she would have to take care of her mother full-time. Raddatz's mother, Guadalupe Pena Villegas, 83, suffers from Alzheimer's and bipolar disorder, a combination that sometimes makes her a danger to herself and others, and thus requires her to be supervised 24 hours a day.
Odd or frustrating behaviors around clean clothes, bathing, oral care, hairstyling, and shaving seldom come "out of nowhere." Usually there's a trigger, and ways to work around it.
A reader dealing with the strains of a family member suffering from Alzheimer’s raised this interesting question: “Our father always stressed how important it was to tell the truth. Now he has dementia, and my brother says he’s been told it’s okay to tell white lies so as not to further agitate our father. This makes me really uncomfortable. How can we resolve this?”
For many people living with dementia, a good night’s sleep is difficult to achieve. There are many reasons why poor sleep and dementia go hand-in-hand, such as brain changes due to dementia, disordered breathing and environmental factors.
One common factor that disturbs sleep is the need to use the toilet during the night and being unable to get back to dreamland. This can result in far too little sleep night after night. It often affects the sleep of family members who live with the person with dementia as well.
An assisted-living facility in Liverpool, England, was confronted with an unusual dilemma in 2013: An elderly resident with severe dementia suddenly became terrified of water and showering — and categorically refused to bathe.
“His demeanor and his well-being started disintegrating. It became socially unacceptable,” recalled Carol Rogers, executive director for education and visitors at National Museums Liverpool, a complex of eight cultural venues that developed and now operates a dementia program. “The other older people didn’t want him in the day room. It wasn’t pleasant for them, and there was a loss of dignity for him.”
When it comes to our hearts, even the non-medical types among us pretty much know what we need to be doing. In a nutshell: exercising and eating right.
But when it comes to our brains, guidelines tend to be foggier. Besides, we figure, since we're probably as smart as we'll ever be, what can we possibly do?
When Indrani Das needed motivation, she left the lab. The 2017 winner of the Regeneron Science Talent Search -- one of the United States' most prestigious science and math competitions -- enrolled in her local ambulance corps as an emergency medical technician. She needed to be close to people: the kind of lives she one day hopes to improve.
"It was this thought that there could be a person at the end of this experiment ... that drove me to continue," she said. Answering 911 calls helped with that.
For over a decade NCBAC has offered a Certified Alzheimer Caregiver Certification as a credential showing that the caregiver has completed a level of basic competence. This newly updated training is excellent preparation for the Caregiver Certification (CAC™)exam. Caregivers may prepare for the certification exam by taking the CAC™ training course. The online course consists of nine (9) modules and has just been updated to reflect new information in a number of areas. Voice narration has also been added.
Updates in the training course include: medications, roles and responsibilities of the caregiver, legal and ethical issues and additional case examples. Questions are included at the end of each module to test learning. These questions are written in the NCLEX style of writing items. A Glossary of Terms and Reference Guide are also included for students.
Dear Carol: My dad's been in a nursing home for several years and is ready for hospice care. I read your column about hospice care being covered by most insurances, but I'm wondering what happens in a nursing home. Does insurance start to cover nursing home costs, then, too? Would it be better to move Dad home for this time period? It's hard to make these decisions at such a stressful time. — RE