Dementia is a slow poison that eventually kills memory and takes away all cognitive abilities one by one.
Seeing your loved family members decaying this way is stressful for the rest of the family. So, some tips can help you save yourself from emotional turmoil and, at the same time, take care of the affected person.
Be assured that your sensibility will be the anchor in this bottomless pit. Remember that it is always hard on the caregivers and the family members of dementia-affected people, but it is much harder for the patients.
To make things a little easier, you can browse through YourDementiaTherapist.com, and you will find a lot of suggestions that can help you with all the confusion.
Dementia is sad, and to fight it off, you need courage and sympathy. Caring for your loved one is challenging, but you need to ensure that you are okay first; only then you may be able to help the patients at home.
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Effective Tips for Dementia Care
Basic tips related to dementia patient care are ways of life. You have to choose what is best for you and your family members. The most important fact is that you need to understand how much you are going to offer and to which extent you are comfortable offering your service.
1. Don’t Keep Your Hopes High
This is more sort of own counselling because if any of your loved ones are affected by dementia, you would love to see them or her recover. However, recovery in the truest sense of the word is not possible, so you have to adjust to reality.
All you can do is spend enough time with the person so that you can make little signs of progress.
Suppose, if you are engaging the patient with some mentally stimulating games, you might see some little improvement, but that is not to be complacent about.
Don’t think you can see further improvement immediately. So, accept the reality and keep your expectation level at a moderate level.
2. Do Tasks Together
If you are taking care of a person deeply affected by dementia, then you need to understand that they do their basic tasks with difficulty.
However, if you encourage them to do it together, they will show interest and will try to perform the task in a better way.
3. Deal With Patience
The most important thing is to keep patience. Because you may have to teach dementia-affected people the same things repeatedly, it is the only way things are registered in their minds.
You need to master the art of being cool and sensible at the same time. Just think, your enthusiasm is making the life of the patient easier.
4. Be Polite
Commonly, disappointment and frustration will set in, but you have to be polite while talking or teaching something to the affected person.
Rude words, and cruel diction, can be detrimental to the patient. So deal with them with sympathy, softness, and kindness so that they are not afraid of you. Rather they should feel safe and secure around you.
5. Keep the Doctor in the Loop
The doctor should be informed about every alarming thing that you notice. It could be good, bad, improvement, regression, whatever, but keep the doctor in the loop without much delay.
This way, you will know that the patient is under the supervision of the doctor. You should be frank enough with the doctor so that there is nothing hidden. The expert doctor will tell you how to cope with the situation.
Conclusion
You will have to be wise enough to understand that dementia can’t be cured, so expecting miraculous results is not good. Rather, to give meaning to their life and maintain a certain quality of it will be a better idea.
Handle the situation with positivity and affirmation, and it will be meaningful indeed. The reward that you will get is awesome and beyond words because of the love between you and the family member matters and nothing else.
