After 40+ years of nursing in geriatrics, hospice, medical surgical and years as a nurse educator in western medicine and holistic medicine, I have found some great solutions to the challenges of care giving.

I have cracked some codes and found more sustainable approaches.  By synthesizing study in nursing with my lifelong study in alternative therapies, a lot more possibilities open up than you might have imagined were even out there.  I have been given insights into what works.  It is my pleasure to share those insights with you.

 

My Greatest Teacher in my Nursing Career was my own Mother as she slipped deeper into dementia.  She no longer recognized me, was silent, withdrawn, and at times outwardly angry.  I dreaded my visits with her.  Balancing my young family's needs with career and elder care was becoming more than I could handle.  My older siblings were feeling equally drained.  

Something had to give if we were to keep going.

Creating Our Own  Way  

The experts gave techniques.  They promised great results.  Apparently they had never met a family like mine  

because we were not seeing positive outcomes.

A workshop about a new communication technique for elders with dementia diagnoses gave me a glimmer of hope.  For some it helped the elders regain lost communication skills.  Would it help my nonverbal mother?

I taught the communication techniques to my siblings.  To encourage mom's re-engagement with the world, we threw ourselves into creating a world that she would find enticing and nurturing.   

In short, we pampered her to the max.

We experimented with our own new methods of giving care and finely tuned our actions based on mom's responses to the innovations.

Soft touch and chocolate communication

Within weeks my previously nonverbal mother was sharing animated stories of her childhood days and our family's history.  Anger was gone.

Over the next few years, we laughed.  We cried.  We read books and sang together.  When words were no longer possible, I spoke to her in soft touch and chocolates.  I was again feeling excited about my time with her.

After three years of deeper connection with her, she passed peacefully and without fear with us there to love her til the last breath.

With our hearts so solidly connected to Mom the inevitable losses seemed somehow a bit easier for all of us to bear.  We were grieving her death but happy with the last years we had shared. 

My siblings and I were left with no regrets but instead with gratitude for the warm, rich memories we made after putting our own methods into action and reaping the results.

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