Caregiving For Dementia

The show is about the Delaney Family's caregiving for someone with dementia. My mother has had dementia for four years now, In the show, we talk about things we do and don't do because of dementia. I 'm hoping that this podcast will help someone Who's in the same situation. So basically the show is a little bit about things to do and things not to do with someone with dementia.

27 Months Without Mommy 12/03/2021

Life After Caregiving Part 2 02/10/2020

Life After Care Giving 01/31/2020

A Happy Thanksgiving Message 11/27/2019

Caregiving journey ended 09/03/2019

The hardest talk a family can never have. 09/03/2019

The hardest talk a family can never have. Episode # 93 There comes a time in caregivers journey that they know time is very close to running out. We hear caregiving for dementia have realized that fact. The past five days Mama has not eat anything at all, the past four days Mama has not drank anything, and for the past three days Mama’s been very hard to wake up at all. When she is awake it’s about two minutes and she’s right back out. Mamas, breathing has also changed its no longer normal breathing. Doesn’t look the same, doesn’t sound the same as the normal breathing does Mama breeze through her mouth now and has for the past three days. And also she’s breathing through her mouth it’s not as loud as you would think it should be. If you listen to me anytime at all you know that we keep my older brother and his wife informed as to what mamas doing anytime something changes with Mama last night we had the hardest conversation the family can have. We talked about what to do when this journey is over. What to expect and what not to expect from Mama. From the people that we need to talk to when it’s done. What we want and what we don’t want as for his funeral arrangements. I guess I’m kind of lucky in this respect because my older brothers always told me that he married mom, meaning that his wife and mom think an awful lot alike and I know from my own standpoint I’ve had conversations with mom and turned around had same conversation with his wife and dam near had the same conversation and there was no way, absolutely no way that mom and his wife had talked. So now I find myself trying to come to grips with the fact of not having mom in the living room. Mama not be in there when I come home from the store. Not knowing exactly how to fill. All kind of emotions are floating through my head, my heart, and I’m sure that the same kind of things are going on with Stephanie and Michael I’m sure they have all kind of feelings running through their brains as well. Feeling helpless is probably my number one feeling right now. Not being able to help mom do anything at all. Everything is changing so rapidly this week, although mom is still with us for now we are getting prepared for Mama’s last trip to West Virginia. I’m not sure if there will be in episode next couple weeks I’ll have to play that by ear. /episode/index/show/babymountainradio/id/11097896

Things we take for granted as Caregivers 08/26/2019

Things we take for granted as Caregivers Episode #92 Show Notes There are so many things in life that normal people take for granted. This becomes more apparent the longer you take care of your loved one. There are things that I take for granted because there things that come natural to me that Mama can no longer do for herself. Mama can no longer wash her face, brush her hair, brush her teeth, or even talk. Mama tries so hard to talk to us and you can see the frustration in her face as she tries to say something and can’t. Mama tries to hold a cup of something to drink and because of her Parkinson’s she shakes so bad that some of whatever’s in the cup spills out. Mama so apologetic when she makes a mess. One of the things that I have taken for granted myself in my caregiving was the fact that when Mama was taking care of my grandmother who fortunately was not as bad as Mama is Mama never asked me to stay with grandma to help with grandma. I always had free time on my hands to do whatever I wanted to do. And I’ve forgotten that in my caregiving because we were leaving Michael with his grandmother way too much. We sought that it was good training for a after all he is old enough to have a child of his own. And until recently here we did not realize that Michael was having a troubled time taking care of his grandmother. And I’ve forgotten how much free time I had with my grandmother. A lot of times I’ll go out and check on Mama and mamas asleep, but there are other times where mamas really fidgety, and the only thing I can do is just sit there to chair and hold her hand. Tell her she’s okay, tell her that she’s safe, that I love her. A lot of the time in my own caregiving, I take for granted the fact that I can go brush my teeth, my mouth. Mama can no longer do that and here the other day I was trying to give her some ice water out of a spoon and this white flaky something another come out of her mouth. I asked Mama said Mama what is that and of course I didn’t get a straight answer, all I got the beat was mumbo-jumbo, come to find out what ever this crap was all through her mouth, was on her tongue, the roof of her mouth. Now I don’t have nerve enough to stick my fingers in my mother’s mouth! That’s just not going to happen. So I ended up taking a toothbrush and brushing her mouth her teeth, the roof of her mouth. So if your loved one stops eating check their mouth make sure this pasty crusty group is not in their mouth. Because it could stop them from eating could stop them from swallowing. /episode/index/show/babymountainradio/id/11002841

Caregiving Mistakes,Regrets 08/20/2019

Caregiving Mistakes/Regrets 08/19/2019

Caregiving Mistakes/Regrets Episode #91 Show Notes In your caregiving a lot of times you do things in the heat of the moment. After time goes by you wonder whether or not what you did was the right thing to do. A lot of caregivers won’t tell you everything that they go through in their caregiving. I am one of those people who won’t tell you every little thing that goes on in in the house with the caregiving I am one that won’t tell you what Mama has done to us I won’t tell you what we’ve done to Mama. What I tried to do in this podcast is tell you what we do and what we don’t do because of dementia. When we first started caregiving we didn’t know what we were doing at all. I’ve gone out to Facebook to the caregiving support groups and I have found that a lot of posts in those groups are things that we have had questions about in our caregiving. So I try to take this podcast and tell you what we have done in that situation and what we haven’t been in that situation All to try to help you in your caregiving. I am also taking some courses in podcasting through the school of podcasting and you can find out at and while taking these courses we have meetings every once in a while and in one of those meetings I had a lady asked me, if I had any regrets in my caregiving? Immediately the answer was no. If you hurt listen to me anytime at all you know that I have the attitude of I’m not doing anything for Mama that Mama didn’t do for me when I was a kid. So now I don’t have any regrets taking care Mama. There are times when Mama doesn’t want to eat or drink anything. That seems to of gotten worse for some reason this past week. We don’t know why all we do know is that there are times when we could get her Glucerna shakes down her when we couldn’t get her to eat anything but for some reason this week were having a lot of problems getting her to drink anything. We’re having to take a spoon and try to get her to take a sip out of the spoon. We’ll have to see how long that takes. If you don’t get anything down her and she doesn’t get her medicine the right way the right time. There comes a time in your caregiving where a lot of things don’t matter anymore. If the one that your caregiving for doesn’t eat or drink anything, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. That would probably be my, if I had to pick a regret, in my caregiving that would probably be it, the fact that you can’t make them eat, you can put food in front of them, you can put drink in front of them, but you can’t make them drink, and that that would be my one regret the fact that I can’t force Mama to eat or drink although I may try you can’t force them to take anything in. /episode/index/show/babymountainradio/id/10922997

Know It All Doctors 08/05/2019

Getting your loved one to do whatever 07/29/2019

There But Not There 07/08/2019

There But Not There Episode # 88 There are times when mama just seems to be staring out into space. There are times when mama doesn’t look at you but she looks through you. She doesn’t realize there’s anything going on around her. Over the Fourth of July weekend mamas great-granddaughter come to see her. Not mama seem to be fixated on the granddaughter but I’m not sure whether she realized it was her granddaughter or if she just realized that somebody different was in the house. Mama was not afraid of the granddaughter because she did allow the granddaughter to feed her some food, she did talk to the granddaughter, she did hold the granddaughter’s hand. Which I believe told us that mama was not afraid of the granddaughter. Mama was never one for the fireworks even before she got dementia now she would take us kids to see the fireworks are let us kids have fireworks at the house for the Fourth of July especially sparklers but that was back before the government said you couldn’t have a said the fireworks were dangerous. So mama didn’t even acknowledge the fact that the fireworks were on the TV this year the didn’t seem too upset her at all she didn’t react to them at all and didn’t seem to anyway. When mama first got her dementia I would always tell her that I love her I still do that today but I used to get on I love you too or a me too however I am no longer getting tighter those all I’m getting now is oh okay. There are times when I don’t even get that all I get is the blank stare. I understand that this dementia will eventually take everything away from mama. I’m wondering if this blank stare into space is part of the dementia taking everything away from mama. It’s a stare of almost looking through you instead of at you. When mama broke her hip the insurance company sent in some therapist in nurses and stuff and one of the therapists worked with mom’s legs and showed Stephanie and I how to do some exercises with mom’s legs and mama reacts to those exercises especially the lake that has the broken hip. Now I don’t think the exercises are actually hurting the hip however I do believe that they are making mama a little more uncomfortable because of mama’s reaction. I do believe that the blank stares or the stare into space is happening a little more frequent it last a little longer and it takes a little bit more to get a reaction out of mama than normal. However fortunately it doesn’t seem to last very long once we start moving mama around a little bed once we start talking to mom once we start Robin mama’s back mama comes to her self for lack of a better description. I have not been able to pinpoint any trickier that causes this blank stare. The stare is just there at any time and I have not been able to figure out anything that’s causing it nothing that mama does nothing that’s on the TV nothing that we do here to house so I’m not sure where the stare comes from it just appears out of nowhere for no reason. /episode/index/show/babymountainradio/id/10448468

Family Interference 07/01/2019

Family Interference Episode # 87 This week’s episode of caregiving for dementia was inspired by a Facebook group post someone said something about their siblings giving them a hard time about caregiving for their loved one. If you are the main caregiver for your loved one you are the one that is dealing with the aftereffects of your siblings coming to visit. If they are not around 24 seven 365 days a year like you are, if they are not sharing in the caregiving you’ll need to be able to tell your siblings to kiss your you know what, if they start trying to telling you what you need to do and what you don’t need to do. Mamma’s had six of us kids five of us are still living. Three of the five have just up and disappeared. They don’t call, they don’t write, and they definitely, definitely don’t come around to see mom. They have been gone for 5 or 6 years and if they were to show up today I don’t know that I’d would let them in the house. I’m not even sure I’d have a long drawn out conversation with any of them. Your siblings should have enough respect for you and for your loved one that they would not argue too awful much about what you’re doing and what you’re not doing. If your siblings don’t have enough respect for you or your loved one then you need to be able to put them in their place. After all you are the one that’s taking care of your loved one not them. The siblings would have a hard time forcing you to do anything other than what you’re doing, especially if you have a doctor’s letter saying that your loved one is incompetent. So believe me and my siblings showed up and started trying to tell me how to take care mom or how not to take care mom I would waste no time putting them in their place and if need be waive the doctor’s letter at them just let them know that the Dr. knows that she’s incompetent and that you know that the Dr. knows. When Mama divorced my stepfather the three siblings stayed with their father instead of living with mom and I. Now I’m not really going to whole lot of details here but they abandoned mom then. When the siblings decided that they wanted to go to college they knew where to go to get the help for college they knew that mom would help them any way that she could. Mama helped all three of them through college one she even helped with other bills and did without a lot of things and we didn’t do a lot of things when it was just mom and I in my 20s because the three of them were in school. They needed mom while they were in school. Now then that Mama needs them, and they have all, once again up and disappeared. Mama has two great grandkids that she’s never even laid eyes on. Mama is now so far gone that even if you brought the kids around Mama wouldn’t know them so Mama will never actually know those two great grandkids because their mother is not around. Before Mama got sick my sister would come down and see mom and take mom shopping and whatever else they wanted to do but when they got home,all Mama wanted to do in the evening was rest. When she wasn’t here she would call every evening and talk to mom for at least an hour or so. But since Mama has been diagnosed with this devastating disease of dementia none of them are around. Mama /episode/index/show/babymountainradio/id/10351664