The Dementia Caregiver's Toolbox

Dementia Outdoors

Unless you are a hermit, you probably spend some part of your day outside the place you live.  Even if it is just going back and forth to work, you pass through the outdoors on your way to somewhere else.  It is NORMAL for humans to spend time enjoying the benefits of the outdoors. 

Sometimes dementia caregivers find that the outdoors, even a yard attached to a house, can become 

an anxiety provoking situation when they care for someone with dementia.  Finding a way to balance safety with the obvious pluses of an outdoor experience is the key.

Dementia Book Review: Buffalo Lockjaw

We don't usually think of dementia as a secondary topic for a novel but Buffalo Lockjaw by Greg Ames provides an exception.  A first novel for Mr. Ames, published in April 2009 by Hyperion, tells the story of James Fitzroy returning to his hometown of Buffalo, NY during a chilling winter.

Waiting for James were all the local people who stayed behind but most importantly his parents:  his mother, has taken a turn for the worse in her dementia and his father who is coping with her illness and the fact that she is in a nursing home.