My Spouse Has Dementia

Your loved one is diagnosed with dementia. While you focus on symptoms, tasks and decisions, a long-standing pattern from your childhood is being triggered. That pattern will shape your caregiving style. That childhood...

You will never regret being kind to your spouse. In a strong marriage, the sexual expression of love is the sinew that ties two hearts together and forms the kind of bond we depend on to get us through life's greatest...

You know that caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's or other form of dementia can leave your mind confused, your body exhausted, and your spirit depressed. Yes, and what if I said there's something simple that might...

"None of the books I read conveyed the ugly truth about caregiving: that it can destroy you – even kill you – if you go about it wrong." That's just a taste of the hard-hitting reality conveyed by author Martin (Marty)...

At part of their daughter's wedding ceremony, Heather was supposed to give their daughter a necklace that had once belonged to Heather's mother. Heather's husband, John, talks about what it was like when he and his...

For 13 years, John Scully visited his mom in a nursing home. For the last 8 years of her life, she couldn't talk. So he had other conversations. And they became a book. It's called Visited Mom Today: Conversations...

I grew up listening to Walter Cronkite. He signed off each nightly newscast with "And that's the way it is." As a kid, I was often alarmed by the news. But I reasoned that if Walter Cronkite respected me enough to tell...

This episode is a message for the caregiver to send to someone else, someone who doesn't know, or doesn't understand, the stress the caregiver is going through. I liken that stress to driving alone, in an old car, up a...

"Between now and dead, you've got a purpose. Don't be timid." Before she retired as a hospice chaplain, Reverend Victoria Burdick faced her own death several times. In her 30s while in divinity school, she wrote a...

You've probably heard of anticipatory grief. Unbidden, hidden, and immediate, it comes with the diagnosis that your loved one has Alzheimer's. Depending on when the diagnosis was delivered, it can be several years or...

For a person with Alzheimer's or other form of dementia, wandering can be dangerous. If that person isn't found within 24 hours, the chances that he or she will suffer serious injury, even death, increase dramatically...

Your spouse has Alzheimer's. You know he - or she - shouldn't be driving. When you bring up the subject, you hear some version of, "That's ridiculous! I know how to drive a car." He might be right. He might still know...

Mary Lou Falcone became a caregiver when her father had a massive stroke. She was 10 years old. The experience prepared her for the day, many years later, when her husband, illustrator and 1950s rocker Nicky Zann , was...

Sometimes, the dreams we carry inspire us. Then life changes, especially if your spouse has dementia. Now, those same dreams weigh us down… and we have to let go. Advertisements for some memory care facilities and some...

This is a cautionary tale about a dear friend, a family caregiver who died first. She was in her mid-70s, a few weeks younger than I am. In mid-April, she had a stroke. She died mid-July, just as I faced the one-year...