~ Guest post by Mary Emma Allen

As soon as we resolve to follow a specific agenda or schedule when caring for our family member with Alzheimer’s, everything changes! Thus, many of our New Year’s resolutions don’t remain static.

My husband and I realized we needed to move my mom from her home in New York State to ours in New Hampshire, sometime “after the first of the year,” probably near the end of January. That would give us time to get Mother’s room ready and some business affairs wrapped up.

Then everything changed. One morning during the Christmas weekend, while we visited Mother (Jim and I drove the 275-mile trip weekly to care for her), she disappeared. I awoke to find…Mother wasn’t in the house! She didn’t answer my calls. She didn’t appear from any room in the one-story house. Yet her coat and boots were there.

Jim and I bundled up and were about to step outside into the blowing cold (around zero with wind chill), when I discovered Mother trudging up a slight slope to the back door.

“Here, Kitty! Here, Kitty, Kitty!” she was calling.

I bustled Mother inside, realized she was dressed only in her nightgown, slippers, knee socks, and a sweater with scarf around her neck.

“I was trying to find Kitty,” Mother explained. I pointed out that Kitty was sleeping in the rocking chair.

“No, I’m not cold,” she insisted, when I tried to pull her arms through her bathrobe sleeves.

However, she agreed the cup of hot coffee “is warming me up.”

We knew then we had to speed up our moving plans. Mother couldn’t be alone, with only a neighbor and the Meals on Wheels delivery people popping in to check on her. So, a few days after New Year’s, we drove Mother and her cat to New Hampshire for an extended visit that lasted for 9 years. She stayed first at our home, then a nursing home until her death.

Make resolutions and set goals for the coming year and plan time for yourself. However, have a Plan B in the back of your mind for almost everything you do. The agenda may need adjustment as you follow along the pathway of the Alzheimer’s Journey.

No matter what you do….keep one resolution… include humor in each day. You, your family members, and your patient need the joy of laughter… as you go into the New Year with its many Alzheimer’s adventures.

Resources from AGIS.com:
Tips for Identifying the Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s Disease & Dementia
Alzheimer’s & Safety at Home

Mary Emma Allen is co-blogger at Alzheimer’s Notes. She cared for her mother and aunt during their Alzheimer’s days and wrote “When We Become the Parent to Our Parents” about her mother’s journey. Mary also gives talks and presentations about Alzheimer’s and caregiving. Contact her at: me.allen[at]juno.com.

Filed under: Alzheimer's