Freddi Donner

Guest blogger and caregiver, Freddi Donner, shares a poignant remembrance about her mother.

My mom died around noon on December 31st, 1999. She hated New Year’s and I think she decided just to skip the hyped up transition to 2000. Her journey through Alzheimer’s was more difficult for me and my sisters than for her. Of course, she was VERY angry when we told her about her diagnosis and thought my sister and I were so cruel for telling her. As her journey progressed, I began to study the disease. Knowing the “7 stages”, or that there were stages at all, helped me understand what was happening.

We moved her to assisted living for her safety. It was not long after that date she had to be moved to the locked floor. This is when she became childlike. “I have just come back from New Orleans!”, she shares one day. “Mom, why didn’t you let me know? I would have gone with you!” She shared the events of her trip that had an uncanny agenda of a trip she took in her 20’s.

Mom taught me through her journey that imagination is more fun than reality, so let’s just play there. My roles changed as the visits continued (her mom, her sister, an aid, her daughter) but the stories got more entertaining. “I got married last week” was my favorite! She had actually “taken” to one of the male aids who worked the midnight shift. I guess they spent a LOT of time together, because that is who she “married”.  I honestly believe that my mom had more fun in the midst of the Alzheimer’s disease than she had in real life. She loved life and got to relive all her favorite memories and recreate the life she really wanted. God bless her.

Freddi Donner
Unlock your possibilities
for better health and more wealth
E-mail: freddi@forhealthandbalance.com
Co-Chair, Health and Wellness Committee
Dulles Regional Chamber
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www.nikken.com/freddi
www.forhealthandbalance.com
NEW: www.livewellvirginia.org

Ronald P. Culberson

Last week I attended the 23rd Annual Caregiver Conference, Shedding Light on Dementia Care. Ronald P. Culberson, author of Is Your Glass Laugh Full? opened the session. His speech titled, “”Humor and Caregiving: How to Lighten Up When Things Get Heavy,” was well received by the audience of about 200. On a dreary, wet day in Fairfax, VA, what better way to open a conference than a speaker talking about why humor.

In stressing why humor, Culberson said humor is a way to do two things:

1. Manage stress
2. Connect with others

As a way to manage stress, he said if you can laugh in the midst of stress, it cannot overwhelm you. He emphasized that you have to see humor all the time, otherwise you won’t be able to deal with it when you’re stressed. Humor is always there if you’re always on the lookout for it. In our world, however, Culberson said sometimes we seem to love to “out negative” each other.

Second, humor can help us connect with other people. We tend to like people with a sense of humor. When you share humor, funny things happen; it changes the relationship. Hence, humor should be used as a tool.

I bought a copy of Culberson’s book, Is Your Glass Laugh Full? at the conference. Somewhat autobiographical in nature, he shares incidents in his life and presents them in a delightful, humorous fashion. It’s a book that’s difficult to stop reading. Being a primary caretaker is not easy and extremely stressful. I highly recommend this book to remove some of the stress.

If there was a simple recipe for care-taking, life would be a lot easier. But every case is different. For example, I met someone at the conference whose husband has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He will not cooperate and listen to anyone and hence, she’s unable to bring in outside help. He sleeps during the day and is up all night. This conference was a good chance for her and others to get away for the day and get some ideas from the wonderful attendees, speakers, and vendors.

Sponsored by The Northern Virginia Dementia Care Consortium, I was not aware of it previously (probably because my attention was not focused on Alzheimer’s), but I’m definitely looking forward to it next year.

One of the grestest lessons I’ve learned about humor is that it is all around us, in every corner of our lives. If we keep our humor antennae up and look for laughs we’ll find reasons to smile every day. ~Ron Culberson in Is Your Glass Laugh Full?