AARP: How a Smart Home Can Help You or a Loved One Age in Place Right Now



furnished by Rachael Bell Lite, Sales Counselor, Westminster Canterbury Shenandoah Valley, Winchester, VA. 



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PEretiredAD is my new blog. AD stands for Alzheimer's Disease. It's not me. It's Jenny--my wife of 58 years. It began a few years ago during a routine visit with her PCP. "Is there anything else?" "I'm having trouble with my memory." Jenny's father and his six siblings all died from Alzheimer's disease. So it began. A head scan and a referral to a neurologist. It took a year to get the appointment. We had questions: "Is there a problem?" The neurologist's nurse practitioner said "Maybe. Maybe not."  "What's next?" we asked. Smartphone in hand, she began searching for drugs. The drugs made Jenny sick. After a year with this neurologist, we gave up. In the meantime, I searched for answers to our questions. We attended sessions in a neighboring county sponsored by the Virginia Program for Aging Services (VPAS). Nice people, but we still weren't getting answers to our questions.  After another year, out o...
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One of the most difficult aspects of being a caregiver for a dementia patient is unpredictability. "Experts" have the answer.  https://www.lbda.org/understanding-behavioral-changes-in-dementia/   Anyone who can follow all of this guidance should be nominated for sainthood. Unfortunately, I'm not a candidate for sainthood. Far from it. Furthermore,  I have my own problems with memory loss, aging, etc. I have zero qualifications as a caregiver and our financial resources are not unlimited.  Needless to say, dementia changes a loved one into a different person. They aren't the same person that they were before. You don't know them and they don't know you.  When you've known someone for most of your life, you can usually predict how they will react. Not so with dementia. Dealing with dementia's unpredictability may be the greatest challenge of a caregiver's life.  https://www.flickr.com/photos/gammaman/29881862738 attribution: Eli Christman and flickr ...
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Most of what I've learned so far about caregiving has been "seat-of-the-pants". The medical people haven't been much help. I grew up in a family with four sisters. While my sisters learned domestic skills from our mother, e.g. meal planning, groceries, cooking, laundry, cleaning house, etc., I was relegated to other "more masculine" chores, e.g. trash maintenance, lawn care, car care, etc. As a result, there's a BIG hole in my domestic skills. I imagine that most married couples like us have/had a "division-of-responsibilities" in their marriage. Jenny worked (mostly part-time) "outside-the-home" before and during our years of marriage. She worked full-time while I finished college. After college, I got a job, got drafted and spent two years in the army. Michelle was born during these years. Jenny became Michelle's primary caregiver. Then came Ken, Karen and Cheryl. For most of the next 20 years Jenny continued as our family's...
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