When caring for people who are suffering from Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, there comes a time when the person suffering loses the ability to communicate. During typical late stage Alzheimer's, a person may be bed or chair-bound, unable to speak, and in some cases completely unresponsive. Sadly, the temptation is to disengage from the person we love at this point. Why bother talking with them when they can't talk back? Why ask them questions to which they can no longer respond? While this approach is understandable to anyone who has dealt with this disease firsthand, it misses a huge opportunity to continue to connect with the people we care about.
During our Alzheimer's and Other Dementia training at Home Instead Senior Care, we deal specifically with late stage clients. We address the fact that just because the people for whom we are caring aren't able to verbally validate our attempts, we shouldn't be discouraged from continuing to interact with them. We should, however, amend the techniques we use in order to give them the maximum benefit of our involvement.
The techniques we use for late stage clients all revolve around the five senses: smell, touch, taste, sight, and hearing. These senses unlock a world of memories for the clients that we serve that we may never truly realize. For all of us, there are certain things which take us to another time and place.
-If I smell Cinnamon Butter Cake, I am transported back to my grandparent's house in Woodward, OK. I can see the large front door they had swinging open as my brother and I bound out of the car after a long drive up from Texas and into their waiting arms.
-The feel of a saxophone in my hands brings back memories of long band bus trips and cold competition mornings.
-The taste of tamales paints a portrait of Christmas in San Antonio that no artist could ever come close to rivaling.
-The sight of pictures of my kids in their toddler years brings smiles to my heart that last all day.
-If I hear the song "Two Princes" by the Spin Doctors, I find myself sitting in the back seat of Jana Davis' car on the way to school. She was a beautiful flute player in the high school band who as a senior agreed to give me a ride as a freshman so that I wouldn't have to ride the bus.
None of these journeys you can go on with me. For our dementia clients in their late stages, you can't go where they are headed either. You may never get the validation of knowing that you have given them the memory tool to take that mental trip. But we do not care for those in our lives in order to attain some personal validation, we care for them in order to provide them with the best possible quality of life. And on that mission, we never give up.
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