Another First

Margaret said the other day, while on a walk, Mother suggested that they go to the store and buy a bottle of wine.

A First

Mother invited me to take a walk.  A long walk for her now is around the block.  She likes to walk in the afternoon. Sometimes, if the weather is nice, she and the caregivers take several short walks a day.

I went with her and Marcie around the block. Halfway around the block she said "I have children." I was surprised to hear this, since she used to deny this strenuously. She said "They come over and then there's alot." I said "Your children bring alot of people when they visit?" She said "Yes. They act real nice, then......" and she shrugged. 

"And then they leave?" I asked. "Yes." she said.

Tools for Retooling

If you have been following the Oregonian coverage of the new phenomenon of bike rage, you may need the following recipe to help you reclaim your sense of familiarity with the world.

"Peaceful & Happy Tea

1 tsp. green or jasmine tea

1 tsp. rose petals

1 tsp. rooibos tea

1 tsp. dandelion leaves

1 tsp. lemon balm

1 tsp. chamomile flowers

1 tsp. crushed of sliced fresh ginger

1 tsp.  roasted brown rice and/or borage flowers

( What's a borage flower?)

1/2 cup fresh mint OR 1 tsp. dried peppermint

Add large pinch to 2 cups of just boiled water, and let steep for  2 - 5 minutes. Sweeten with honey and/or ginger candy."

This recipe comes from Sonia Gaemi, aka Dr. Sonia. To my surprise, all of the ingredients are either here in the house or growing in the yard. 

I theorized to Margaret that the easily enraged bikers were non-Oregonians. She theorized back that no, the easily enraged drivers are non-Oregonians. No one knows who all these infuriated people are. 

I am issuing an open invitation to them to come to the Fremont Street Center for Healthy Aging and drink some tea.

Name Game

Margaret told me yesterday that she noticed that Mother calls Jenna by her name. She doesn't do this for anyone else in her life, now that Glen is gone. She calls Dennis "Glen", and once in a while she will use my name correctly to a caregiver, but she doesn't use my name, ever, to me.  

Somehow, Jenna's presence in her life has been longstanding enough so that Mother remembers her by name.

Mother asks the caregiver who I am almost everyday. She always looks baffled when they say "That's your daughter Anne." However, when Joy was over the other day, Mother pointed to her and told Margaret "That's Anne."

Same Time, Same Place

The oncology appointment was brief. They took Mother's blood pressure, weighed her, did a blood draw, and told us that they'd see us next year.

Time Based Nurture

I have been trying to describe the exact model we are testing here at the Fremont Street Center for Healthy Aging. We eat well, get exercise, and try to live balanced lives - all well established avenues to health. But we are doing something else on top of that, and I was trying to figure out what it was. Last Saturday, we had a dinner in the backyard with Jenna and her family, Dennis' sister Debbie and her husband Jim, their daughter Heather and her husband Kyle, and their son Zander. The age range: two 2 year olds and one 80 year old. Four couples, one widow, one caregiver, four children.

This is the model we are testing. Can a person with Alzheimers be incorporated into family life? Can they live at home? Do the benefits of family life outbalance the practical problems/challenges/headaches/  rigors of living with adult who has advancing dementia? 

The ratio of caregivers to patient around that table was 13:1. Thirteen of us did not have Alzheimers. One did. Mother was very comfortable being part of the group. The conversation was free flowing, and Mother participated. At one point she volunteered the information that Marcie, who was sitting next to her, was a very good person and deserved all the best things in life.

Marcie, by the way, agrees with that statement.

Does living with your family confer powerful but invisible benefits similar to the micronutrients found in fresh vegetables which you cannot find in vitamin pills?

Mother was surrounded by relatives in the backyard of her own house. Her birdbath, her mini-trampoline, her raspberry bushes and roses. Was she there as a charity, because she was wearing diapers and being told not to eat toys? Or was she there in the place of honor, since she was giving us this setting. We were there because of Mother. She had planned her life so that this dinner could happen. 

Mother took many steps to plan for her own old age. She did everything right, as far as providing the legal directives, the pension, the health insurance, the home ownership, the well educated offspring, the model of helping others who are helpless ( I saw this up close when she worked with Gill and me to secure Susie's guardianship, something which did not flow out of her natural tendencies or personality traits, but was motivated solely out of concern for Susie) and a entire life of non smoking and non drinking. She did everything possible to care for herself, and she valued her family.

Sitting around the table in her backyard was the result: a micro community which is "healthified" by her (her example, her bookcases, her birdbath) and which "healthifies" her back (by finding the right caregivers, reminding her not to eat toys). 

This is the model the Fremont Street Center for Healthy Aging is experimenting with.  Is it possible that some ways of living together endow health, just as some foods endow health, or certain levels of activity endow health. The intergenerational approach of the Fremont Street Center for Healthy Aging is not exactly new. Why was it discarded? When Bart, who will be three in November, visits Mother, it is super apparent that caring for toddlers and caring for people with dementia is almost exactly the same job. 

Once we get to the bottom of this research question, we will move onto the second topic of interest to Fremont Street research staff. Does Alzheimers, all by itself, cause isolation and emotional distress? Or is it the way people with Alzheimers are treated which causes isolation and emotional distress. 

Oncology Appt

Tomorrow we will be taking Mother to the oncologist.