Alzheimer ’s Patients and Caregivers: Brain Breakdowns in Tandem

An Alzheimer’s patient’s brain is not the only one broken-down by the disease. The caregiver’s brain is, as well. How could it not?
Consider soon-to-be-caregiver, Margaret, in this MindMap of her life. She is not a real person by the way, but this picture of her life is based on real people and might be a lot like yours. Like many today, she is busy, time-crunched and already on “cognitive overload” as a working wife and mother with a home, three children, a dog, a cat, and a small vacation home. Her husband works for a global company and travels most of each week. She joined her father-in-law’s accounting firm and recently became the managing partner.
Margaret’s life is near perfect. She is financially secure and her family has never faced anything worse than ordinary illnesses, occasional plumbing problems and snow days. It is overloaded, though, and about to be more so as it collides with Alzheimer’s Disease: her widowed father-in-law has just been diagnosed. Others in his family do not live nearby and given her husband’s travel schedule, she will become the caregiver.
Imagining she was my best friend, I set out to help her. It took far longer than I thought to understand the stages of the disease and caregiving dynamics and to map them out to show her and help plan next steps. It did not take long, however, to realize that she needed far more than information. She needed help, not only for caregiving but for coordination, and that was not easy to find...

Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - January 3, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Alzheimer’s Disease Brain Health Caregiving Dementia Source Type: blogs