Alzheimer’s Disease

And then an aging parent moves in…

When an aging parent moves in, no one can predict how it will work out.  What looks good in the beginning can come undone in sudden and distressing ways. Adult children need to frame moving in as “one step” in…

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Dancing with Dementia

Dementia recasts the memory landscape with people and events that never existed.  We are both shocked and intrigued by what our aging parents are saying.  Where did that come from we ask ourselves.  And then there is the nagging question…

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Shades of Dementia

  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…

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A New Set Design for Nursing Homes

This is a fascinating innovation in the physical design of a nursing home. Forget the clinical model of mini-hospitals and consider bringing the outside inside with a neighborhood look and feel. How comforting to have a front porch with your…

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The Dementia Game Is About You

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…

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What We Live For…

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…

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Failing In Place

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…

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Anything But Dementia

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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Art Therapy and Alzheimer’s Disease

Yes, there is loss, painful, progressive loss. But what remains in Alzheimer’s disease? That is the critical question that this blog post explores. In this case, art turns out to be the residual miracle… An Unexpected Legacy: Art Therapy Breakthroughs…

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Are We More Than Our Memories?

This fascinating article from Scientific American reveals new research that argues “morals, not memories, define who we are.” The study has implications for patients with Alzheimer’s and other disorders… Morals, Not Memories, Define Who We Are…

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