Stroke Care and the Caregiver
I was reminded today at the pool how much caregiving for strokes could be a whole page unto itself. With typically half the body incapacitated, it offers unique challenges just as every other diagnoses does. The good news with strokes is that latest research with neuroplasticity is that new neuronal paths grow. That means there can be improvement–sometimes greatly so and sometimes just a bit. But it takes repetition, repetition, repetition. But don’t get discouraged. In the meantime here are some helpful tips, resources and tools specific to stroke patient care.
Forgiveness – One of the Most Important Practices of a Caregiver
Caregiving is not like what most os us expect. There are many things that do not go like we had hoped or planned. Family that we thought would help...don't, people say the most terrible things if you take care of your loved one at home and not in a nursing facility,...
Tooth Infection
Tooth care is really important with people with dementias. They tend not to take good care of their teeth, caregivers tend to drag their feet with assisting, and tooth and gum infections are rampant. Regular dentist appointments matter. For us that means taking her...
An Important Word
The world is on fire. Things are setting up for a huge collapse and/or terrible strife across the globe. Here's the thing--we've got to think of our loved ones. Do you have extra briefs? Extra food? Extra medicine? Extra toilet paper? Extra medical supplies? ...
Lewy-versary – 9 Years
It's been 9 years since Lewy exploded on the scene. I was away at the time and did not enter the picture until 6 months later. But it's been a wild, unexpected, dramatic 9 years. Complete with 7 unexpected traumatic surgerires including 3 hip fractures, 1 femur...
Bowel Incontintence
Bowel incontinence is no joke and it comes at late stages. For us, since mom has broken her 3x (2x on one and 1x on the other), she cannot stand. No longer can we get her into the bathroom in our older house to put her in the shower to clean her up. It's in the...
The Unseen 99
Imagine for a minute running a 100 mile ultra marathon. People sort of know but they really don't know how hard it is. They only see you at the last mile and wonder what's wrong with you. Why aren't you running faster? Why aren't you doing more? Why aren't you...
Watermelon Help
It's hot these days. At least where we are at. And those with dementia rarely drink enough. Part of the reason is that swallowing is a HUGE issue in LBD. In fact, so much so that it's often why a person dies. They can no longer swallow to eat, or they choke and...
General Anesthesia – A Switch for LBD
I went to a medical seminar for practioners and sure enough, this is confirmed. General anesthesia is a switch for LBD. Since then we try to use a spinal block for us since we learned this (she did a hip surgery with this). Also learned that the LBDA.org people...
The Best Piece of Equipment We Have for This Season
Each season of caregiving means different pieces of equipment. For right now, the gold piece of equipment we have is the Get-U-Up Lift by Invacare. Mom cannot stand or lift her legs at all. The confusion is too great. The lift is the only thing we use to get her...
Dodging Tornadoes (Literally)
It's tornado season and it is coming on strong. With mom's latest hip fracture, tornado precautions have changed. We used to be able to take her downstairs as she could get in and out of the golf cart and we could drive her down to the basement door. Not anymore. ...
English
Afrikaans
Albanian
Amharic
Arabic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Basque
Belarusian
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Cebuano
Chichewa
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Corsican
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Esperanto
Estonian
Filipino
Finnish
French
Frisian
Galician
Georgian
German
Greek
Gujarati
Haitian Creole
Hausa
Hawaiian
Hebrew
Hindi
Hmong
Hungarian
Icelandic
Igbo
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Kannada
Kazakh
Khmer
Korean
Kurdish (Kurmanji)
Kyrgyz
Lao
Latin
Latvian
Lithuanian
Luxembourgish
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay
Malayalam
Maltese
Maori
Marathi
Mongolian
Myanmar (Burmese)
Nepali
Norwegian
Pashto
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Punjabi
Romanian
Russian
Samoan
Scottish Gaelic
Serbian
Sesotho
Shona
Sindhi
Sinhala
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Spanish
Sudanese
Swahili
Swedish
Tajik
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
Vietnamese
Welsh
Xhosa
Yiddish
Yoruba
Zulu