We keep extremely claim (sic) around my mother (95) whose live has shrunk to almost nothing because she can remember nothing. My sister and I keep her on course with dozens of post-it-notes, weekly trips to throw away magazines, newspapers, third class mail and debris, and many phone calls.
We have a lady who cleans her apartment, a nurse’s aid who checks twice a day for medicines and once a week to fill pill box, we insist she do her own laundry (which she does), we schedule and remind her to get toe nails and hair cut, we bring her small amounts of food that require no cooking, we do all her paper and financial work. We make sure she takes a shower and shampoos her hair once a week; we are happy that she has to walk a lot to get to communal dining rooms.
It helps enormously that she chose to live in a staged care community while she was still herself and able to enjoy life and be relieved of the chores.
The medical treatment for the dementia is marginally efficacious. We won’t take her off the Aricept to see whether that is true. We give her 4000 IU vitamin D3, 81 mg baby aspirin and a multi vitamin daily. She takes Fosamax for osteoporosis and Norvax for high BP.
The next horror awaiting her will be the necessity of replacing a very old pacemaker. The cardiologist bought her an extra year, but we are here now. Hospital, surgeon, general anesthesia – all bad things even for the young. We hope she will live through this, but we can’t avoid it.