The Residents Voice From a Dementia Unit

Welcome to this edition of Newsgram. Recently I’ve been worried about Dementia. Why? Well, I’m not as young as I used to be and sometimes I forget where I left my phone or what I was about to say so I did a bit of research and found out that those things are pretty normal and […]

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Welcome to this edition of Newsgram.

Recently I’ve been worried about Dementia. Why? Well, I’m not as young as I used to be and sometimes I forget where I left my phone or what I was about to say so I did a bit of research and found out that those things are pretty normal and they are nothing at all to worry about. As you may have guessed I’m also a hypochondriac and people have referred to as demented but that is also something completely different. 

I found a great example of the difference between normal aging and someone with dementia on the website dementia.org. They said normal forgetfulness is walking into the kitchen and forgetting what you went in there for, or misplacing the car keys. A person with dementia however, may lose the car keys and then forget what they are used for. So far that has not happened to me. Wait, what was I saying….just kidding. Gotta have a sense of humor today because the topic can be pretty heavy. 

The truth is forgetting things from time to time is normal. If we didn’t have that ability we’d probably go insane.

One more fact for you. Dementia is not a disease, it’s a general term for people with the kind of impaired ability to think, or make decisions that actually interferes with their everyday activities. The most common type of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease. There are others but that’s about all I’m qualified to give you and when you are diagnosed with that kind of disease you’re going to need some help and hopefully it will be from a person as caring as Pieta Valentine, Physiotherapist 

Pieta Valentine – I had a Physiotherapy practice for twenty-five years so mental stress  was always a very interesting aspect but after forty years as a Physiotherapist I thought, you know it’s good to do something new and I just sort of fell upon this dementia work which I really enjoyed and from a Physiotherapist perspective there’s always the interest of rehabilitating the patient but if not that at least enabling them to manage to the best of their abilities. 

and so began her work with Dementia patients

Pieta Valentine – When I saw all these people shut down and shut off I thought surely, surely something can be done and so from there just, you know I quietly I worked away on this work and all of which is explained in the book. 

The book is called The Residents’ Voice From a Dementia Unit and in it she not only introduces us to several of the patients but she gives us a look at the day-to-day life in a dementia unit something that is really interesting to learn about if you find yourself in need of these kinds of services. 

Pieta Valentine – That’s why I’ve written the book actually. I’ve explained everything about the rotating of a dementia unit; all the staff and what they do, how you recognize them, the security codes, who to set up the room, how to fill out the forms. There’s an enormous amount to do if someone goes into a dementia unit and if you can know a lot of that information in advance it won’t be such a shock to the system for the relative and if the relative is set up they’ll be able to help the person going in more likely. 

Forewarned is forearmed. Knowing what to expect in this type of situation can be a huge help since most of us have no idea what to expect. We hope we never have to learn about it, at least not first hand. There is also another extremely useful bit of information in the book and it’s the essence of the whole thing. 

Pieta Valentine – These people still have a working intellect even though their memory is faded or gone, finished. 

That is the thing I found most interesting. Aside from meeting some of the patients knowing that while they have lost their memories or whatever they are still people and her findings are documented in a report which is also in the book. 

 Pieta Valentine – So that was built from the fact when I started to realize that these people could still actually think and you could encourage that from a physiotherapy perspective I was encouraging them and motivating them to concentrate just as I would in my physiotherapy practice I would encourage patients to concentrate on the exercises and do their exercises. I was encouraging these people to think, contribute and communicate  and expecting them to and saying that they actually had too. If they were in the group there was that expectation that they had to start communicating this took a long time the concentrating took a lot of time to build up that’s the hardest thing but once people with dementia had learned the technique to be able to concentrate, reading being a very big part of this by the way then you can actually build up the skills of confidence and communication from that. 

Readers are leaders. Isn’t that what they always say? I don’t think Harry Truman was talking about dementia patients when he said “Not all readers become leaders, but all leaders must be readers” but it’s important at all stages of life to do things that keep your mind active. Reading is an excellent option for doing that. It’s one of these reasons for doing this podcast….anyway the bottom line is.

Pieta Valentine – So much can be done in a positive practical way to help. 

How’s that for a one liner? The challenges of memory and direction orientation loss affect everyone from the patient to their families and the caregivers. They all need help. Knowing that Dementia patients have a working intellect that can be engaged and activated is huge. With the right kind of care they can learn to activate that intellect and live a better life. 

The existence of the intellect is not new but how it can be activated with people with dementia is the revelation in her book. 

Pieta Valentine  – I’ve actually written two books one right after the other but the first half of The Residents Voice is a novel about the characters in the dementia unit based on my observations and experiences over many years but it goes through the story of them being able to build up their thinking capacity. Build up their concentration, their communication skills and finally developing their own community. The central four or five pages is the report on the academic work and then the last half is all the physiotherapy techniques that family and friends can do to help their loved ones  with dementia in a very practical positive way.

Her books are The Residents Voice From a Dementia Unit and The Residents Rise From a Dementia Unit and if you or someone you know is affected by dementia they  offer a nice perspective on not only what life is like in the unit but it gives you a strategy and some good advice on what to do. 

They are available in tons of places online just google The Residents Voice and you’ll see them. We’ve added links to some of the big sites like Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com and xlibris.com to the show’s description. And that will do it for this edition of Newsgram from Webtalkradio.com

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