There are plenty of love songs with the phrase, “You complete me.” Yet the accompanying notion that “two become one” implies that you are only 50% or half a person until married. That misguided belief has caused many disappointed brides who find out, only after walking down the isle, that marriage doesn’t fill you up, it doesn't complete you nor make you whole—a man offers so much in the way of love, understanding, companionship, strength but he cannot fill every void.

In the town of Shikatsu, Aichi Prefecture, an effective method has been adopted to prevent senile dementia. It is called a “memory-method approach,” and involves elderly people discussing their memories among themselves.

One of the participants said, “We went to school with a handmade cloth bag on our backs.” Another said, “We called a pencil box ‘fudezutsu.’”

They talked without interruption, switching from one subject to another, from umbrellas to school records and lunches. Their memories were surprisingly vivid, and the coordinators paid attention so that every participant talked.

The memory-method approach stabilizes the elderly people's state of the mind. They remember things relatively well even if they suffer from cognitive disease. They scrape together their memories and, in their minds, return to the course they have taken. By practicing that procedure, they reinvigorate their brain and gain the courage to meet the current circumstances they face.

The memory school was opened four years ago. The town's museum of folklore, in which about 100,000 pieces of houseware and toys, such as washtubs, folding dining tables and traditional cooking stoves commonly used in the Showa Era (1926-1989), are crammed, played a large part in establishing the school. The fact that elderly people who visited the museum became lively at seeing the articles being shown offered important suggestions to the planners.

An excerpt from the book Hidden Messages: What Our Words and Actions are Really Telling Our Children

“Hey, punkin’, I have some things to do; then we’ll play later.”

“Just a little while, Daddy?” she pleads with a smile. But looking at his face, she suddenly knows he’d never drop everything just for some silly play, but she can’t help asking one last time. When the expected answer comes, she wanders off resignedly to watch the TV show that’s always on at this time, always on for her when Daddy’s not.

Lily watches her program, all the while counting the minutes on the clock. Jeff loses himself in the mail, the newspaper, and the answering machine, looking forward to the completion of all his daily responsibilities so that he can play with his daughter. After some time on the computer reading e-mail, he trudges upstairs, loosening his tie. He can almost feel the steamy warmth of the shower, the comfort of those old sweats, the … wait, what is this?

He turns to find a beaming little girl, who’d sneaked up the stairs behind him, given away by the soft thumping of her tiny feet. She musters all the vocal sweetness that she imagines a good girl to have and asks, “Can we play now, Daddy?” She doesn’t want to bother him, doesn’t want to pester. She just wants him close to her, laughing his silly laugh just for her.

What Jeff hears is persistence -- a trait he will someday appreciate in her as an adult, but one that annoys him today. So, with a ruffle of her hair, he dismisses her with strained patience. “In a little bit, Lily. Why don’t you go ask Mommy if she can play with you now?”

* * *

“Ready for some dinner?” he asks, walking quickly past her in an effort to stave off a few repeats of her “Want to play?” chorus. He enters the kitchen and begins pulling items from the refrigerator. Just then, the telephone rings, and little ears listen -- as they always do -- as Jeff answers. “Hello? Hey, Steven. How are ya? Great. Did you catch the game Sunday? I can’t believe he missed that play…” And so he is lost to her again, this time to adult conversation, phone tucked between ear and shoulder.

After letting his wife know where he’s bound, he leans down to plant kisses on his daughter’s soft cheeks. “Be right back, punkin’,” he says. And he leaves too quickly to notice the silent tears that begin to run down those same cheeks so hastily kissed, soft cheeks that are soon buried in pillows. When Jeff returns, she is asleep, dreaming of moving out and becoming a neighbor who could ring the doorbell, call Daddy on the phone, and send e-mails to him.

Wandering Alzheimer's

Here is a post from www.mycarelink.net a forum for families who are caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's.

The lost are found, with a little help from Safe Return Program
Keeping them safe
By Lisa Ryckman, Rocky Mountain News

November 14, 2005

On a fall day seven years ago, Kenneth Talburt went for a walk and never came back.

Nobody knows where the 75-year-old man thought he was going when he put on the baseball cap that proclaimed him "No. 1 Granddad" and left his home at the Grandview Acres trailer park in Cañon City.

For years, nobody knew where Kenneth Talburt was.

And he was only a mile away.

Some hikers found his remains, and the hat given to him by his granddaughters, down a steep embankment in a wooded area in May. It appeared that he had walked until he couldn't anymore.

Like the estimated 30,000 other people who wander away every year, Talburt's last walk was propelled by Alzheimer's or some other dementia-related disease, police believe. It's estimated that 60 percent of the 4.5 million Americans with dementia will wander, becoming lost and confused - even in a place they've lived for years.

There's a one-day window to find them before their chances of survival are cut in half, research shows.

"It's very dangerous behavior," says Catherine Sewell, director of client services for the Alzheimer's Association. "And the longer they're missing, the worse it is."

While the word wandering implies aimlessness, its definition changes when dementia is involved, says Jennifer Pancer, safety specialist with the Alzheimer's Association. Most people who become lost had a goal in mind.

"These folks get stuck in a past time, and they head out to fulfill whatever was happening at that time in their lives," she says.

Deborah Uetz's father was used to driving and taking long walks when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, even though he was getting lost in the home he'd lived in for 50 years.

"The fear of him becoming lost was my greatest nightmare," says Uetz, co-author of Into the Mist: When Someone You Love Has Alzheimer's. "My husband's grandmother had suffered from Alzheimer's disease and was killed by a truck while wandering on a dark road in the middle of the night."

But putting limitations on loved ones, even for their own good, can cause guilt feelings for caregivers, she says.

"Asking my dad for his car keys was one of the hardest things I ever had to do," Uetz says. "Unfortunately, there are a staggering number of people who are driving with dementia because it is so upsetting to take their keys."

To keep her father safe during his walks, Uetz went along.

"The unexpected outcome of that was some conversations that meant the world to me," she says. "He talked about things he did when he was a little boy and even told me about the first girl he ever kissed. I actually got to know him better after his illness than I had before his symptoms began."

Wandering can happen at any time, Pancer says, and any memory can trigger it. A woman who was put on a bus in Missouri bound for Georgia ended up in New Jersey - the site of her daughter's funeral four years earlier. She was living on the street when she was found nine days later.

"Her daughter's funeral may have been the last time she was on Greyhound," Pancer says.

Wanderers on wheels, such as a man who drove across three states because he thought he needed to get to work, are rare, Pancer says. Most go on foot, like Anna Sporcich, who clearly had a destination when she walked away from her Denver assisted-living residence in May, an extra pair of shoes in her hand.

She headed to the home she'd lived in for 27 years but fell down with nine blocks to go. Police took her to the emergency room and tracked down her daughter, Mary Hanna.

"I sat in a chair crying like a baby. I was scared to death," says Hanna, who was vacationing in New York when police reached her. "I was so far away. And it's my mother."

Hanna had registered her mother with the Alzheimer's Association Safe Return Program, a nationwide, round-the-clock identification system. In its 12 years, 100,000 people have been registered with Safe Return, and it has helped locate more than 7,500 of them.

If I End Up Like Terri: An Open Letter to My Wife
By Mark Hartwig

Dear Janelle,

These last few months have troubled me deeply. And I have a request that I hope you'll have the courage and strength to honor: If I ever become like Terri Schiavo, please don't put me through what she has endured.

After fighting cancer for 10 years; after suffering through multiple courses of toxic drugs; after two stem-cell transplants and 16 dismal weeks in a hospital room, tied to tangles of tubes, I've only scratched the surface of her misery. I feel as if I've scaled great mountains of suffering only to find I'm in the foothills of a range that towers beyond sight.

Dear, if I'm ever forced to scale that range, if I ever become like Terri — whether through the myriad drugs I'm taking, future treatments or the cancer itself — please don't pull my feeding tube. Instead, if at all possible, take me and my tube home, where I can live out my days with you and the kids, and where friends can come and go as they wish.

Put me in a place where I won't be in the way, but can still sense the activity of life around me. Talk to me; share your hopes, fears and failures with me. Read me books. I may not understand, but perhaps I'll sense the warmth of a lover's voice. And I promise I won't interrupt, or give away your secrets. And deep down inside, perhaps I'll groan a wordless prayer for you.

And please, please, please don't crush what's left of me by taking another lover while I still live. You're my wife, Dear, my only lover. Apart from God alone, you're the one person who daily breathes confidence and acceptance into my life. You're the one with whom I can feel unashamed and completely at home. I can absorb the loss of many things. But please don't rob me of that. Abide with me, as you have done so faithfully through our many years of trauma and tears.

This is my wish, Dear. I hope to live with you a good many years. I hope to grow old with you and see our grandchildren. But if I don't, know that I love you and that I always will. I promise ... just as I did a quarter century ago.

With all my love,
Mark

posted by sunnyday at 10:15 AM

1 comments