Category: dementia denial

Not There Yet

This is a common refrain. A caregiver asks Dr. Cate for dementia guidance. I answer a specific question and then outline strategic plans they may want to consider. The response is always “We are not there yet.” The question to ask yourself is “where is there?” When your relationship is enough overwhelmed with brain change to ask for help—where are you? As a caregiver myself, I hear myself saying “not there yet”. This is an answer that comes from my desire to be anywhere but here—and my fear of there. It is my fear of financial struggle, and my fear…

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Validate Instead of Negate

At this time of year hauntings are not just in old homes.  If you are living with an individual with dementia, you may well be faced with ghosts and imaginings that are convincingly real in presentation. Some forms of dementia are more likely to have delusions and hallucinations as symptoms. Your challenge as a caregiver is to validate rather than negate the presence of the man in the bathroom or the re-written biography that includes new players, new scenarios. It is helpful to define both a delusion and a hallucination. Delusions in dementia world are false beliefs.1 When your 94…

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Further Neurology Diagnostics

My dementia spouse immersion program is proceeding with intensity and verve. After our first brush with a neurologist whose diagnosis of MCI reported on earlier this year; we decided to seek further information. With our home-base being in the Caribbean, we decided to stay medically near my grand-daughter. As a mecca of national think tanks and healthcare options, we proceeded to investigate. The royal “we”, a term we joke about as things progress. Meaning I do all the work while he interjects. The quality of interjection is for another post. So about eight months ago I proceeded to contact several…

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Denial and Isolation

Well, I humbly come to you no longer from the sidelines but from the field. Dr. Cate, Dementia Coach has been forced to put on a helmet and uniform. Yet even as I write this I question if indeed I am exaggerating. Just because my spouse has said for the past three years that he is having processing problems. Just because he emits off the scale anxiety around any new process, including opening a new piece of equipment . . . I do not have a diagnosis. Maybe it is all in our heads. Maybe he is just crying wolf…

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