How I Stopped My Mother from Being Mean to Me

Alzheimer's World is a wild, sometimes crazy, and backwards place. In Alzheimer's World words from an Alzheimer's patient are often a cry for help. Many times what an Alzheimer's patient says is exactly the opposite of what they mean.

By Bob DeMarco
Alzheimer's Reading Room

Does this person look mean to you?

The list of difficult behaviors that Alzheimer's patients express in the mid stage of the disease are long, and sometimes never ending.

I couldn't possibly list all of the mean and nutty behaviors my mother, Dotty, engaged in in those first few years of our life together with Alzheimer's. The list is just to long.

For this article I am going to focus in on one mean behavior: when my mother repeatedly told me to get out, she didn't need me, and she could take care of herself.

How to Get a Dementia Patient to Do What You Want Them to Do

Many of you can probably imagine what it feels like when a person living with dementia tells you - "I don't need you, get out". Or, says something even worse than that.

So there I was. I had dropped out of the world to care for my mother, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Could she have said anything meaner, "I don't need you, get out."

It hurt.

How to Understand the Difference Between Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease

These mean spirited episodes with my mother went on for years before they stopped.

However, I was never deterred by her mean spirited behavior because I made a decision from the very beginning - I am going to put a stop to this.

So I tried everything in the book. I tried being overly nice - didn't work.

I tried being overly positive - didn't work. I tried explaining why she needed my help - didn't work.

I told her if she didn't start accepting my help she would end up in a "home" - that did not work. In fact, it made things much worse.

I tried everything I could think of doing - it did not work.

Finally, I threw the book away and started thinking. And then it happened. I realized something had to change, and that something was me.

Pretty simple huh? Dotty wasn't going to change so it was up to me to change. To change the entire dynamic of our relationship.

Shortly after my realization that I had to change, I invented a new place I first called Dotty's World.

I started asking myself - why? Why does Dotty get so upset? What is happening that is making her upset? Is it me?

Yes, it was me. Okay, we had that out of the way. It was me.

Eventually I changed the name of our new world to Alzheimer's World.

Alzheimer's World was the place I would go to to better understand Dotty, and to better understand me.

At first, I found that it was difficult to change gears and get into AlZheimer's World. So, I actually started taking a giant step to the left when I needed to enter Alzheimer's World. To be honest, I couldn't get there without the step to the left. Just couldn't.

Next, I started taking notes in a spiral notebook. Every time Dotty would get mean I would write down what was happening before these episodes.

One thing stood out. Every time I left Dotty alone, shortly thereafter, she would get mean. "Get out, I don't need you, I can take care of myself".

It became obvious to me that I couldn't leave Dotty alone. I couldn't leave her alone for 30 minutes to go to the store. Or, for any other reason. This is pretty common in mid to later stage Alzheimer's. A person who is deeply forgetful cannot be left alone.

Yes, there were other cataylsts to this mean spirited and often bizarre and crazy behavior.

For example, if I would tell Dotty you can't do that. Or, if I would correct her and try to explain the errors in her thinking. Or, even if I would stop her from doing something.

Once I made it to Alzheimer's World I started looking at the world from Dotty's point of view. I looked at the world from her eyes.

Pretty soon I realized that the things that Dotty would do seemed very normal to her. I just looked at her while she did them and pretty much kept my mouth shut.

Pretty quickly, almost overnight in fact, I accepted that the things Dotty did were normal in Alzheimer's World. So, I stepped to the left to better understand.

Topic - Living in Alzheimer's World

In Alzheimer's World instead of getting all bent out of shape, I found myself marveling at the things Dotty would do. The things that Alzheimer's patients do are often fascinating. After all, their brain works differently that yours and mine. You have to start understanding the brain on Alzheimer's.

Now to my first major point. When Dotty said,

"Get out, I don't need you, I can take care of myself"

that is not what she meant. What she did mean is:

Don't leave me alone, I'm scared, please don't put me away in a home.

Yep, she was scared and, like it or not, I was the one causing the fear when I left her alone.

Simple solution, I stopped leaving her alone.

Once I realized that there was a very different meaning to Dotty's words in Alzheimer's World, I was able to develop better and better solutions to problems.

In this case, I didn't leave Dotty alone. But that is not all that I did. When she said "get out", instead of getting all bent out of shape and reacting back at her, I did the exact opposite. What did I do?

I smiled, walked over to her, put my arm around her, and calmly said, in a clear, low, confident voice,

I'm not going anywhere, we are here together now, and I am going to take care of you.

It took a while, but yes, it finally sunk into her brain.

Alzheimer's World is wild, sometimes crazy, a backwards place. I learned that in Alzheimer's World words from an Alzheimer's patient are often a cry for help. Many times what an Alzheimer's patient says is exactly the opposite of what they mean.

So I started meeting meanness with an equal and opposite reaction - kindness. Kindness, compassion, and understanding.

This is how you learn to cope with Alzheimer's. Understand, cope, communicate.

By the way, Dotty stopped telling me to get out.

In the last few years Doty only told me to "get out" a few times.

I actually laughed when she said it. Not at her, more or less, really laughed at myself.


___________________________________Related Articles

• What is the Difference Between Alzheimer’s and Dementia
• Test Your Memory for Alzheimer's (5 Best Memory Tests)
• What is Alzheimer's Disease?
• Is Alzheimer's World an Irrational Place?
• Communicating in Alzheimer's World
• 10 Symptoms of Early Stage Alzheimer's Disease
• The Seven Stages of Alzheimer's

___________________________________
Bob DeMarco is the Founder and Editor of the Alzheimer's Reading Room (ARR). The ARR Knowledge Base contains more than 5,000 articles. Bob lives in Delray Beach, FL.

You are reading original content the Alzheimer's Reading Room

Nutrition And Immunity In Children

Often in first signs of cold parents complain on weak immunity of child imagining badly what signs of illness exactly should cause anxiety. Does your child get diseased with influenza 3 – 4 times a year?

Most likely, in this case there is no need to worry and interfere with process of immunity formation in child. As general strengthening procedures may be recommended cold training of the body, walkings on fresh air and in children over 3 years old taking of natural botanical medicines based on Echinacea juice.

Day regimen
When sleep, rest, exercises, studies, work and food intake occur at one and the same time, then for the body it is easier to turn from one activity to another and there is consumed much less energy. Rhythmic cycle helps the body to effectively recuperate, optimally react on stress and changes, therefore child with an accurate and cozy regimen has more capabilities to meet an attack of bacteria and viruses.

Nutrition
First of all, for adequate development child should consume animal proteins and fats. For cold prevention it is good to eat onion and garlic – natural products containing phytoncides - and also vegetables, fruits and berries of red, orange and green color which do contain great amount of vitamin C.

It is better to avoid flavor enhancer, colorants and synthetic vitamins because they do give an additional load on body systems, provoke allergic reactions and do overload child's immunity because they are taken for a long time without taking into consideration individual needs.

Sugar also overloads immune system, helps to wash away from the body all vitamins and microelements and it would be better to exclude it from baby foods. It is good when meals take place at one and the same time as this helps body to better digest foods.

Children's Immunity

One of most important tasks of all parents is care about strengthening their children's immunity because immunity is the base of human health throughout the whole life from birth to decay.

In order to find out how to develop and strengthen child's body defences it is necessary to know nature and mechanisms of immunity. Immunity is the ability of body to effectively resist the action of foreign microorganisms, for example, viruses and bacteria that cause infectious diseases.

There are two types of immunity:

• specific immunity that develops after past diseases, for example, rubella or measles. This immunity type may be developed for the whole life or for some time depending on the disease.
• non-specific immunity that develops in a baby during pregnancy.

From mother's breast milk child gets antibodies to infectious disease which mother had. It means that child on breast feeding has passive immunity and this is very important in first months of life because in this period proper immune system only starts working. 

Therefore, when mother gets cold she needs to continue to feed child with her breast to give antibodies to baby. WHO recommends to feed baby up to two years or even more. Growth factors presented solely in female milk help baby's immune system develop normally.
 

Bifidus factor and lactoferrin presented in mother's milk do increase healthy bifido and lactic bacteria in bowels and reduce growth of pathogenic flora which strengthens child's immunity and lowers liability to colds. Breast feeding cannot 100% guarantee no diseases, but healthy gastrointestinal tract and calm emotional atmosphere in family lower likelihood of getting sick.

5 Effective Ways to Boost Your Immunity

1. Reduce stress in your life
Stress may have positive effects as it is a kind of training before real run, however excess of stress has negative effects and does great damage to your body. Health experts claim that stress decreases immunity and this makes body vulnerable to diseases. Learn to relax and occupy yourself with things you really like. This would have positive effects on your nervous system.

2. Enjoy regular sex
Remember that sex not only relaxes your body and gives pleasure, it also boosts your immunity. Studies showed that regular sexlife (ideally, with permanent partner) is a key to strong health. Latest study examined the connection between health of middle-aged people and sexual activity. Researchers came to the conclusion that people who lead regular sexlife have significantly better health condition than those who make sex rarely.

3. Smile more, laugh more
Researchers tried to find a connection between body protective functions and laugh. It turned out that those who truly laughed during watching cartoons showed immune functions increase.

4. Lead an active life
Regular exercises and generally physical activity do greatly train heart and persistence, they help to increase protective functions of the body and immunity. Spend 15 minutes each day for making exercises. Ideally, spend one hour three times a week.

5. Take up a family pet
Dog is called man's friend for a reason. Among with other pets dog brings a man joy and does not let him seat at one place but instead to move, thus helping to improve human health. It was proved that in these people blood pressure and cholesterol levels get normalized, heart health and vessels health get improved.

Treatment And Prevention Of Virus Infections

It is necessary to create conditions in which fighting between virus and child ends up with child's victory. These conditions include regimen, diet and special medications.

Treatment:
1. Fighting with concrete disease symptoms. For example, treatment of eruptions on skin or cough attenuation, or particular nose drops, or action on high body temperature.
2. Improvement of functioning and lowering of natural loads on cells damaged by virus. For example, anti-inflammatory remedies or medications improving work of liver cells, or medications that activate blood supply of brain cells.

Significant complications and significant limitations that appear when choosing treatment methods of virus infections do define the fact that it is necessary to pay spacial attention on preventive measures.

How to prevent virus infections?
1. Vaccination. Injecting in the body of weakened virus leads to production of antibodies protecting from a particular virus infection (measles, rubella, poliomyelitis, hepatitis B, influenza, tick-borne encephalitis).
2. Avoiding contacts with potential source of infection. At home patient with influenza should be isolated from other members of his family. Selective sexlife to prevent AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
3. Healthy lifestyle helps to formation of a normal immune system.

What Happens When a Virus Enters Your Body

When virus enters human body it starts to fight against the virus, at the beginning at level of non-specific immunity then do appear antibodies. Antibodies do neutralize virus and the disease finishes.

However, it is not so easy as it looks at the first sight. In some cases during the time necessary for antibodies production the virus manages to cause many destructions in the body which leads to severe complications. Sometimes virus enters the human body, infects particular cells and stops his existence. It means that virus is in the body and it really is found in particular cells but this causes no disease – virus does not multiply, it stays in the cell waiting until the immunity weakens.

If virus is able to actively multiply it quickly leads to death and destruction of cell he captured. From destroyed cell they get into blood where antibodies are waiting for them. Thus it happens that active viruses cause acute contagious diseases (rubella, measles, mumps) which last all the time that body needs for antibodies production.

Terms for antibodies production are absolutely determined and as a rule it is 5 – 10 days, therefore it always may be said how long a man will be diseased with measles and when the rash would disappear. The doctor always knows after how many days a patient diseased with rubella would feel better. So if influenza lasts three weeks it means that it is not influenza.

The fact that viruses are found in cells of human body determines major complications in treatment of any viral infection. It is very difficult to destroy virus and leave the cell alive. Not surprisingly, there are few antiviral medications and all of them them are quite specific – it means they act against a particular virus (for example, Tamiflu acts against viruses of group A) or group of viruses (Acyclovir -  against all herpes viruses). It is clear that main principle of viral infections treatment is to help body to fight the virus.

Each Viral Infection Has Its Specific Symptoms

Some time ago one of most terrible diseases was considered natural smallpox, virus of which may live only in human body. During two decades in the world there were registered no cases of infecting human with natural smallpox, it means that the virus causing the disease ceased to exist in wild life. This occurred due to compulsory vaccination against smallpox in past.

Before 1958 each year in the world the diagnosis “smallpox” was made at average 250,000 times. In 1958 the WHO started the campaign of total smallpox liquidation. In 1980 was declared that the Earth is free of natural smallpox.

Each cell in the body performs a number of specific individual functions. After infecting with virus sooner or later do appear problems. Virus damages liver cells – this causes yellow disease and other signs of liver failure. Virus damages mucosa of bronchi – this causes cough, rhonchi in lungs and hurried breathing.

Virus enters cells of the brain – do appear disorder of consciousness, cramps, paralysis. Selectivity of viruses leads to the fact that each viral infection has its specific symptoms and the symptoms will be determined by inability of group of cells damaged by viruses to perform their functions.

Severity of viral infection depends on what cells and how many of them are damaged. It is clear that damage of brain leads to more serious illness than damage of cells of nasal mucosa.

Every cell in human body changes in a certain way during its growth and development. It means that liver cell of a child is not the same as liver cell of an adult. In a child hepatic cell is not maturated yet and hepatitis A virus can hardly multiply in these immature cells, therefore one-year-child never gets diseased with hepatitis A, in older children the disease courses mildly, in teenagers severely than in children, in adults it courses severe.

Childhood infection (rubeola, chickenpox) do course severe in adults. The severity of disease is determined by the condition of a particular cell. For example, hepatic cell of a drunker is weaker than in a non-drunker.