Four Ways Hope Can Help See You Through Dementia Caregiving This Year
By Paula Spencer Scott, Caring.com senior editor
How did you greet the news that a massive, reliable [study] (http://www.caring.com/news/ginkgo-wont-slow-decline-of-aging-brain) discounts ginkgo biloba as a way to prevent cognitive decline or slow Alzheimer's-like memory impairment? Were you disappointed that yet another hopeful Alzheimer's "cure" has proven to be so much ado about nothing?
Hope is a powerful drug -- not only for those beset by disease, but for those who care for them. Losing hope, that buoying belief in the possibility of something better, makes an already-stressed caregiver's road so much the rougher.
That's why hope is worth holding onto, even while caring for someone with a disease like Alzheimer's, where the decline is progressive and the ultimate prognosis is terminal.
Consider -- please! -- these four ways hope can help an Alzheimer's caregiver this new year:
1. Know that while you may not be able to count on a better outcome, you can still hope for a better tomorrow. As in literally tomorrow, the day after today. Invest your optimism in the small, concrete ways that can make the activities of daily living easier on you and contribute to an emotional temperature that helps your loved one feel secure and therefore calmer.
2. Think of hope as your protective vitamin. Hopefulness is calming --- and your heart, stress level, and head need calm. Science conducted by pioneering physician Jerome Groopman and others has shown that having positive expectations (the foundation of hope) can actually block pain by releasing endorphins. You'll feel physically better if you can look for pinpricks of light within the black.
3. Balance hopefulness with pragmatism. They're not opposites; they're complements. All pie-in-the-sky optimism and no realism will mean you're bound to be disappointed. Better to find facts, seek multiple opinions, stay open minded -- these things can ground your hope and inspire fresh ways of looking at a problem. The new evidence on ginkgo looks bleak, for example, but that's not the only way to [slow cognitive decline] (http://www.caring.com/articles/slowing-alzheimers-progress). A blend of hopefulness and pragmatism will take you most easily through the day.
4. Nourish hopes beyond those for the disease. In other words, don't save up all your hope for your loved one; reserve some for yourself. You matter tremendously. Your hopes represent a kind of goal-setting. What are your hopes just for you in the coming year? To be more patient? To reconnect with old friends? To find the buds amid the snows? Define your hopes as the first step to realizing them.
My thoughts and prayers are with you as you now care for your mother with AD...I am also caring for my 87 yr old mom with early onset AD, she lives at my home with my husband and me and at times it can be challenging.Some days are better than others but hopefully she is happy here and I believe I can take better care of her than anyone else. I want her be feel safe and loved as she experiences this decline in her health and independence. I look at it this way, she loved and nurtured me when I was young, now it is my turn to do the same for her and make whatever time she has on this early pleasant and happy.
After almost 15 years of caregiving, first my father with AD who died in a nursing home and now taking care of my 89 yr old mother with AD (at home), I have seen a lot of "take this it helps" and "do this it helps" over the years that did nothing. I even question the use of expensive drugs like Aricept for people into their 80s. I never think about the idea of hope. I think about making the most of their life that I can, making both my parents safe and confortable and the best it can be with what we have. My mother is happy at home and well taken care of even though she can't do much. Most people do not age into their 80s without having some serious health issues. It would be nice to hope that this didn't happen, but it does. AD is one of those nasty diseases that we all wish didn't exist. My hope is that some day there is help for long term illness, of every kind.