Alzheimer’s Disease

An Empathetic Peek Inside the Mind With Dementia

Do you have a hot button? An event, a chance comment, something you hate doing because it pulls a negative trigger inside you? For me, it’s anything that makes me feel stupid. As a little girl,  I often missed things. We would drive in the country and my parents would point out cows or horses […]

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If Dementia Had a Park, What Would it Look Like?

We turned a corner and giant metal flowers caught my eye. I also spied statues of people, but we were caught in the flow of traffic, and although I craned my neck, I saw only enough to know I wanted to return. We did, that night, and I experienced a piece of Ottawa which touched

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Should Grandma Stay Home From the Celebration?

Sarah wanted to do something special for her husband, who “walked with dementia.” He’d always been a sports fan, and she decided she would take him to see one of his favourite teams play. He’d always loved live games, and maybe there’d be a moment which would bring back happy memories. It was a lot

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Finding Your Support in the Caregiving Journey

   “I’ll deal with that later. There’s too much to make sense of right now.”      If you are new to the role of caregiver, it’s tempting to take this attitude about getting support. Your elder needs assistance, but probably you’ve already started the process of getting medical backup for them. After all, you

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“We Got a Dementia Diagnosis. What now?”

You’ve been dreading today for weeks. Since you first noticed signs which disturbed you, since you brought your elder to their GP, since you went to a specialist for testing. Today you are sitting in the office waiting for results, and your stomach is doing that grinding thing. Then the doctor tells you your elder

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How is Dementia Like an Umbrella? Understanding the Basics

Recently Dan, my fiancé, had to go from the house to his car in the visitor’s parking lot through drenching rain. Not the visitor’s parking lot across the street, which had been full, but the one much farther down the street. Digging through the various coats on the coat rack, I found an almost forgotten

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