Category: Sensory Memory

Anticipation & Presence

Having just returned from a whirlwind trip to Tampa, we are now preparing for a week in MD followed by two weeks in Spain.  Each trip is full of family and memory making presence.  Looking back I remember the same anticipation as a young family with selective purchasing, wrapping, preparing.  Today we purchase plane tickets, we pack, we prepare in different ways.  But the common ground is anticipation.  Presents for the family are now translated into presence with the family.  This season  is a wonderful gathering point, regardless of what holiday you are celebrating.  It is a time of decreased…

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Sea-batical

  Dr. Cate, Dementia Coach has been on a bit of a sabbatical, in the Caribbean. It has been life-changing in many ways. The deficit of internet, the influx of foreign culture, new languages, and the rigors of some tough sailing days have taken precedence. It has, in many ways, been an out-of-my-world experience with a total immersion in living moment by moment. After six years in the academic environment coupled with four years in a fast-based memory care admissions role, I have been thrust into a very physical and survival-based present. One that has been far from any idea…

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Deal or Deal Breaker?

Dandelions, daffodils and dreary days.  Each of these images recalls a sensory experience recorded in my primal memory.  Each impacted my life in a particular way from early childhood.  As a child growing up in the suburbs of Baltimore, dandelions were summer flowers that played at my feet as I swung high in the sky on my rope and board swing.  I picked them for my mother, and made them into chains.   They remind me of good simple warm times . . . even when my mind is not really at work.  It’s a primal sensory memory. Likewise daffodils are…

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Creosote and Calico?

Sensory pleasures are individual and based in our history and heritage.  It is sensory pleasures that enrich our offices, homes, sick rooms.  As we encounter illness, it is often the sensory pleasures that define “comfort”.  In the continuing exploration of the power of the senses, C is for comfort.  For me personally, sensory comforts come in the taste and smell of corned beef and cabbage; the smells of coffee and creosote; the beauty of cruising and calico.  Quite an eclectic list, right?  Taking it one comfort at a time:  Corned beef and cabbage plays a key role in my adult…

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B is for . . .

“You are not going to do all 26 letters of the alphabet are you?”  my husband asks as I write this post.  I was annoyed, here is Mr. Metric nay saying a rational outline to explore sensory preferences.  I considered dropping him from my email list . . . but of course, I am going to continue to use the alphabet as my foundation for exploring the value of knowing one another’s sensory preferences.  “Why,” you and he might ask?  In the words of Sherlock Holmes, “It’s elementary, my dear Watson”.  When things are going poorly, whether it be in…

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The ABC’s of Sensory Preferences

Each of us has our own unique fingerprint as well as our own unique sensory preferences.  With our fingerprint, we can be universally identified often for less than positive reasons.  With our unique sensory preferences we can be universally pleased with an experience or universally displeased.  The range of response is based on our ability to communicate due to illness, dementia.  Regardless of health, our sensory preferences remain. If it is an unpleasant sensory stimulant, we will “communicate” our distaste by some type of negative behavior.   Those closest to us are more likely to know what sensory stimulant triggers…

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Epiphany

A smallish powerboat came into the harbor right before sunset.  I watched as they anchored.  The older man immediately put on his snorkel and flippers to dive the anchor, a fairly common practice in Bahamian anchorages.  What caught my eye was that he proceeded to lap the harbor with strong overhand swim strokes.  He went quite a distance before turning back.  The whole time his wife stood at the bow watching him.  His powerful swimming and commitment reminded me of my father.  When we went to the beach my father would go in way past the breakers and swim just…

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My Father’s Hands

Yesterday after work I sat absentmindedly at a stoplight. My mind was suddenly distracted by the present. But not before I found myself thinking about my father “just out of the blue”. One sturdy hand outside the truck window caught my eye. I consciously realized my father thoughts were based on this stranger’s hand. It was like my father’s. It moved like my father’s in a steady random movement of the fingertips. Like his hands moved prior to his illness. I looked at the features, a truck, a roofing company logo, longer but just as sturdy fingers. Yes, it was…

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