Quotes about alzheimers

I pray for my mother. That if she can't ever recover what she's lost or what she's losing, that she not feel like she's lost. I pray that we make her feel necessary and valued as long as possible. That she comes to know comfort, even if I can't provide it myself.

And sometimeswhen she does remember,she calls me her little angeland she knows where she isand everything is all rightfor a second or a minuteand then we cry;she for the life that she lostI for the woman I only know about through the stories of her children.

God doesn’t take things away to be cruel. He takes things away to make room for other things. He takes things away to lighten us. He takes things away so we can fly.

A nation discovers its truest dignity when it cherishes the dignity of those from whom it has not heard for a very long time.

In the heart or every caregiver is a knowing that we are all connected. As I do for you, I do for me.

Never give up hope! If you do, you be dead already.

Affirmations are our mental vitamins, providing the supplementary positive thoughts we need to balance the barrage of negative events and thoughts we experience daily.

Butterfly KissesAged imperfectionsstitched upon my faceyears and years of wisdomearned by His holy grace.Quiet solitude in a humble homeall the family scattered nowlike nomads do they roam.Then a giftsent from abovea memorypure and tangiblewrapped in innocence andunquestioning love.A butterfly kisslands gently upon my cheekfrom an unseen childa kiss most sweet.Heaven grants graceand tears followas youth revisitsthis empty hollow.

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

Offering care means being a companion, not a superior. It doesn’t matter whether the person we are caring for is experiencing cancer, the flu, dementia, or grief.If you are a doctor or surgeon, your expertise and knowledge comes from a superior position. But when our role is to be providers of care, we should be there as equals.

Even though people experiencing dementia become unable to recount what has just happened, they still go through the experience—even without recall. The psychological present lasts about three seconds. We experience the present even when we have dementia. The emotional pain caused by callous treatment or unkind talk occurs during that period. The moods and actions of people with dementia are expressions of what they have experienced, whether they can still use language and recall, or not.

Dying from an aggressive fatal brain tumor is like dying from Alzheimer's disease accelerated one hundred times.

I love you but I got to love me more.

Many of us follow the commandment 'Love One Another.' When it relates to caregiving, we must love one another with boundaries. We must acknowledge that we are included in the 'Love One Another.

The literature has only these words of comfort for a patient and her family at this stage. Remember, there is still a living spirit inside this diminished person, the spirit of someone you love.

Was the dementia of old age a blessing in disguise? No more thoughts. No more damage inflicted. No more memories of damage survived.

Never give up hope. If you do, you'll be dead already.--Dementia Patient, Rose from The Inspired Caregiver

Someday, I suppose I’ll give up, and sit in the rocking chair. But I’ll probably be rocking fast, because I don’t know what I’ll do without a job.

I read of a Buddhist teacher who developed Alzheimer's. He had retired from teaching because his memory was unreliable, but he made one exception for a reunion of his former students. When he walked onto the stage, he forgot everything, even where he was and why. However, he was a skilled Buddhist and he simply began sharing his feelings with the crowd. He said, "I am anxious. I feel stupid. I feel scared and dumb. I am worried that I am wasting everyone's time. I am fearful. I am embarrassing m

You will never experience personal growth, if you fear taking chances. And, you will never become successful, if you operate without integrity.

Caregiving will never be one-size-fits-all.

Caregiving often calls us to lean into love we didn't know possible.

Age isn't stealing from my grandmother it's slowly unwinding her.

I've had an amazing life. One filled with blessings I could never have imagined.Depressed is the last thing I am. Realistic, yes. Sad, never.

They say you can never step into the same river twice. And maybe that's how it was for Papi now, memories shifting and re-forming soundlessly beneath him while the rest of us sat on the shore and watched.

The reason I might forget something is because my mind is like a computer. I have so much useless stuff stored up in there, that when I forget to clean out my Mind's Cache, it has no room for new information. Like wearing pants!

But I knew he wouldn't kiss me. Not tonight. Not like this. There was too much between us now, all the words and near misses. All the potential, the alternate futures that would stretch out before us in an unending spiral, all built on what happened in this moment. I held his fiery gaze and remembered the five-oh, the half-and-half, the promises I'd whispered to myself in the dawn light.I might lose all my memories one day, but that wouldn't keep me from making them.

My short-term factual memory can be like water; events are a brief disturbance on the surface and then it closes back up again, as if nothing ever touched it. But it’s a strange fact that my long-term memory remains strong, perhaps because it recorded events when my mind was unaffected. My emotional memory is intact too, perhaps because feelings are recorded and stored in a different place than facts. The things that happened deeper in the past, and deeper in the breast, are still there for me,

What made Olive the saddest about the Gardners was that everyone wanted to be enshrined in someone’s memory. It was the only way of living on after death, really: in the minds of loved ones. Memories were the only things that made aging bearable, a way of reverting to better, simpler days.

Dementia: Is it more painful to forget, or to be forgotten?

If you knew you were going to lose your memorybut you could choose five things you’d never forget, what would they be—a certain face, a taste, a scent,a touch; how deepin this, the middle of your life?

Dementia isn’t the only place that memories are found to be flawed—people find out they can’t rely on their memories every day. People blindsided in relationships. People who find out their truth is a lie. People pulled from trauma. People awakened, as in Anna and Eve. I wondered: If you can’t use memories to steer your life, what can you use? I didn’t know. It was why I had to write this book.

Bad days my memory functions no better than an out-of-focus kaleidoscope, but other days me recall is painfully perfect.