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posted by: Kay (reply) post date: 06.06.04 (10:43 pm) Well, start with the movie, Oriume, http://www.oriume.com/ I saw it in the movie theater in Kobe--it is from the book "Wasurete-mo shiawase"--true story--should be on video or DVD. An English movie impossible in japan (it is from Women make Movies and costs about $400) is soemthing like "Memoirs of a dutiful daughter"--not really, that is Simone de Beauvoir, but it does show how a daughter living apart from the mother does not read the "signs" of dementia well enough--we are all in denial, no one wants to deal with it......but knowing the signs is a good start....you see, it can get dangerous..... posted by: Kay (reply) post date: 06.06.04 (10:47 pm) It is "Complaints of a dutiful daughter"--www.centerforsocialmedia.org/documents/complaints.pdf there is a script available on line so you could read the whole thing.... You see, dementia is often callede Alzheimer's but could be infart dementia resulting from small, un-realized strokes.... posted by: Kay (reply) post date: 06.06.04 (10:58 pm) Newly widowed, 78yearold Doris Hoffmann decides to move to California to be near her daughter. At first, the filmmaker views her mother's increasingly strange behavior as simple forgetfulness. With a dry wit, Deborah chronicles Doris's bizarre obsessive stages. In the Banana Period, Doris eats banana after banana, unable to remember that she's just finished one. In the Hearing Aid Period, she telephones her daughter's answering machine repeatedly, at fiveminute intervals, desperately trying to locate her missing hearing aid. "I was constantly looking for a way to connect, and a way to know what she's thinking and what she's feeling, and what I should be doing," says Hoffmann. "But it was more like interpreting dreams." As primary and often frustrated caregiver, Hoffmann shared her experiences with friends, who urged her to videotape her thoughts and experiences for a documentary. "was really done out of necessity," says Hoffmann, an accomplished film editor whose credits include THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK and COLOR ADJUSTMENT. "It was an allconsuming situation that I needed to deal with in a film." COMPLAINTS OF A DUTIFUL DAUGHTER Eventually, Hoffmann discovers that her mother is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. A desire to cure the incurable gives way to a growing acceptance of the fact that the Doris Hoffmann her daughter remembers no longer exists. "Little by little," the filmmaker explains, "the only real remaining memories are childhood and very early adulthood. And she remembers her parents fairly well. But what I always thought of as her life, what knew to be her life -- which was me and my brother and my father and the 50 plus years she lived in New York -- that's kind of disappeared. Which is a little hard for me to take." Their former relationship irretrievably obscured by memory loss, the two women forge a new friendship, based not on a shared past but on an abiding love that transcends I posted by: Kay (reply) post date: 06.07.04 (12:48 am) Senility (dementia) is not the only issue--there are incontinence and mobility issues. Resistance to everything is common, hiding what one forgets (like medication-related things) or hiding the incontinence (only for a while, the smell will be out), etc. are there, too. If i were to write "a day in the life of a caregiver" you might seriously think about what it means to care for an elderly person at home. Total commitment...no job...in Japan daytime caregivers exist, but it is a different one every day. Most elderly people resist caregivers, walkers, diapers, etc.--but a different person to have everything explained to every day is over the top. Watch the signs and start planning the minute a sign becomes evident......financial planning is part of it!! Oh, it looks like I am getting started....... posted by: badaunt (reply) post date: 06.07.04 (4:31 am) Reply to: Kay Oh yes, I'm very aware of all these things - my grandfather had a severe stroke when I was 14 or so and my mother, grandmother and I took care of him for two years while he was bedridden, incontinent, and unable to feed himself or speak. We didn't know whether he understood us or not, but we carried on as if he did. My mother did most of the work, but when I was not at school I spent a lot of time with him, feeding him, reading to him, helping with washing him, and most particularly helping to lift him up from the bed, which is not a one-person job. (He became agitated if a man did any of the personal stuff. It had to be a woman, and Grandma was too frail.) I don't know if he suffered from dementia or not, but a stroke victim has most of the other problems. Probably the only easier thing was that because he couldn't get around we didn't have to worry about him wandering off. So when my mother-in-law comes out with things like that comment, I start to wonder. Is this the beginning of it all? And I start checking out the other signs. I check her fridge for food (yes, she's cooking for herself and eating well, from what I can see), and when I go upstairs I surreptitiously check her room for incontinence stains and things like that. It makes me feel guilty - I'm spying on her - but I don't know how else we'd know. But one good sign, I think, is that she is still able to run the elderly daycare centre from home, and so far at least there seems to have been no problems with that. She has to keep records of the people who come, and deal with City Hall and all their endless forms and red tape, and make the old folks tea, and keep them entertained, and sometimes this means taking care of blind or deaf people, and she seems to manage. And there is the Igo, which she excels at. But like I said, her eccentric remarks worry me. She's always been very eccentric, and it's so hard to tell how much of it is 'normal' for her! So I'm keeping my eyes open. Regarding money, I guess The Man would be doing most of the caregiving and I'd be working. (He's a very good nurse, as I know from grim experience.) And I hope his brother would help out - he's rich - but I don't count on it. He's a mean bastard. The rest of the extended family would pitch in though, I'm sure. There are dozens of elderly uncles and aunts who are reasonably well off. (And no dementia in the family, which is heartening, but no guarantee of anything.) So I'm prepared, sort of, but I really don't think it's possible to be REALLY prepared, as I'm sure you know. If you can think of any other signs I should be looking out for (offering tea again and again doesn't count - she has always done that) please let me know! Things that I'd be able to spot on one of my infrequent (during semester) visits... And I'll look out for the movie. posted by: Kay (reply) post date: 06.07.04 (7:45 am) Sounds like you are very advanced in the eldercare arena---your mother in law seems like the lady who runs the group for elderly in the temple--all seems very well there--lucky lucky you. One other resource--"Eldercare for Dummies" one of the Dummies series published in 2003......thank your lucky stars every day!!! posted by: badaunt (reply) post date: 06.07.04 (11:26 am) Reply to: Kay My mother-in-law is the one who runs the group for elderly (at her home, not at a temple - it's for the neighborhood elderly, a system set up by City Hall, who pay her for this) - but she is the one I'm worried about! The impression I got the last time I visited was that the 'elderly' people she is taking care of (most of whom are younger than she is) are in fact taking care of her, at least in some ways. But they seem to enjoy it, I must say. When her house needed a new hot water system, the old guys got onto it. They weeded out the pushy salespeople and so on, researched what she needed, priced everything, and made sure she didn't get ripped off. They had a ball, and she got a good deal. And this led me to wonder: who's taking care of whom? With all her experience with old people over the years, I wonder if that will help her to recognize when she needs help... ? But I also wonder if it might work the other way. She's so used to being the one taking care that maybe she would resist the idea of being the one taken care of. We'll see. She seems OK most of the time, aside from these little lapses of memory and the occasional startling comment, and it's quite possible she'll be managing for another 10 years. |
 
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