Ah, white boards! I promised and I am delivering. White boards can be an incredibly useful tool for a caregiver. But do not put all your trust in a whiteboard my friends.
Yesterday, my Dad erased the line that said “take your morning pills” and hence took another day’s worth of morning pills. Well it’s just extra vitamin D, B, some flax, etc etc. It IS quite a handful of pills but nothing serious. (We supervise his “real” meds in the evening.)
But the white board sometimes works wonders since it allows him to look forward to events and takes the place of his failing memory. I can write “we leave for choir tonight at 5:30” and he can look forward to a wonderful Monday night.
Once I wrote “we love you” and he wrote back “I love you too”.
Of course he used a permanent marker instead of a white board marker so his love cost me a wee bit of scrubbing.
But there are other times, when he simply forgets to look at the white board. We now own 4 white boards.
Recently (over the past 2 months) my husband and I were so busy with choir work that we sometimes didn’t get home until 9:30 or 10:00 at night for 3 or 4 nights each week. My Dad was not impressed. But here’s the confusing part…he would go on insanely long walks (up to 4 hours) because he wasn’t sure he was “wanted” and thought that we had “abandoned” him. He even told us he had started to think about how to move back to Winnipeg where he used to live 30 years ago.
What an odd choice the brain makes. He cannot find the love on the white board in that moment and his brain jumps to a conclusion. His experience is so personal to him that he cannot find a way to think otherwise. It’s about him. And really, how could it not be?
My husband is very patient with him (and with me too!) and will often say that we need to just allow him to feel what he needs to feel while finding ways of letting him know he’s loved.
I of course, just want to snap my Dad out of it! Come on Dad. But these moments forced me to realize that my Dad needs to feel not just loved but needed, appreciated and valued. So simple and yet so hard to do with someone who has dementia and knows they have dementia. It’s challenging but I do quite like a challenge.
Time to change the whiteboard huh? “You are loved” and “I’m gonna need you to help me sweep up leaves tomorrow”. yup.
Try Nat King Cole’s Autumn Leaves – yes, my Dad loves it too.