Alzheimer's Disease & Dementia Archives - Aging, caregiving and the journey through the second half of life

Our worse fears about Alzheimer’s patients trapped in the pandemic

September 17, 2020

The brutal isolation imposed by the pandemic on Alzheimer’s patients living in care facilities is straining their families to the limits as being implicated in thousands of ”excess” deaths of this vulnerable population. (see article in Washington Post) ”Overlooked…

Resist Punitive Perfection

April 7, 2018

Pointing out errors of memory or cognition to our aging parents proves nothing…Period…We all will suffer the same fate when we are firmly in their shoes and we will equally resent being called out for something we can’t control…Instead of…

Shades of Dementia

January 4, 2018

It’s easy to dismiss early slips of aging parents when a name, conversation or place simply goes missing. They’re just getting old we tell ourselves. Just getting old. But it persists, expands and grows worrisome. When denial is no…

Death Is Not The Biggest Problem

March 26, 2017

In her article Silicon Valley Would Rather Cure Death Than Make Life Worth Living Emily Dreyfuss takes technology’s oligarchs to task over their collective crusade to “cure death.” Not that curing death is a bad thing, but as Dreyfuss points…

Higher Levels of Depression in Married Caregivers

February 18, 2017

“We also found that caregivers who are married and caring for a family member with a diagnosis other than cancer, such as Alzheimer’s disease, had higher levels of depression,” says Debra Parker-Oliver, professor of family and community medicine at the…

The Dementia Game Is About You

November 18, 2016

This intriguing game based on navigation and memory skills is part of a massive study on dementia. The study’s goal is to create a baseline for the “normal” decline of navigation and memory skills with aging to serve as a…

The Rise Of Dilemmas

August 16, 2016

The landscape of old age is populated with dilemmas, which represent a new and confusing layer of complexity. Here’s why. We are all raised to be accomplished problem solvers. It is a skill set that focuses on the elimination of…

What We Live For…

August 7, 2016

There are many ways to dance with an aging parent who has dementia. Toni Luciani invited his 91 year old mother to join him using photography and the canvas of her aging to create art. The photographic results in the…

Failing In Place

July 23, 2016

New arrivals to our caregiver support group confirm what’s being reported in the medical literature. Dementia in the land of aging parents has reached a tipping point and now become the overwhelming concern of 80-90% of our attendees. The vast…

Anything But Dementia

October 23, 2015

The question “What Genuinely Terrifies You?” was posed on Reddit and the overwhelming consensus was not war, cancer or being destitute. It was dementia. One responder who goes by the name of Poem_for_you Sprog commented in verse, a sentiment that…

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