“If you’ve seen one person with dementia, you’ve seen one person with dementia.”
Emily Gavin is an occupational therapist who has counseled caregivers of people living with dementia since 2012. There are over 100 different diagnoses of dementia, which affects over 55 million people worldwide, and each case is different—as the 11 million unpaid caregivers in the U.S. alone find out every day. So Emily’s primary recommendations for caregivers are to make peace with how little control you have, and to set up a system that affords everyone the most comfort possible.
Cognitive decline is “cognitive development in reverse," and there are no therapies (yet) to restore your loved one’s faculties. There are a ton of great resources, though (see below), and in the end the best thing you can do is make your person feel as content and safe as possible. Which means you can come up with all kinds of “therapeutic fiblets”—Gregory Peck is president! It’s your birthday again!—to make them feel happier in the moment.
One of our favorite revelations: Caring for a dementia patient is a lot like improv comedy: always agree, listen intently, stay in the moment—and when you find a stray sock filled with licorice jellybeans, just roll with it.
Resources:
Find Emily at Philly Care Coaching
What is a transient ischemic attack (TIA)?
What is normal pressure hydrocephalus?
Lewy Body Dementia—the second-most common form
LBDA.org, ALZ.org, and Stroke.org
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD)
Details of the Skills2Care certification
Rachel Wiley’s Day by Day Dementia Consulting
Teepa Snow’s Positive Approach to Care
The Brain with David Eagleman
Episode 13: “It's hard to lie to the person who taught you not to lie.”