Scamming People With Dementia- Very Wrong but Very Common!

Today I want to talk about something that has really bothered me since I started taking care of my father, and that is the amount of people and businesses who willingly and purposely seek out people like my father to take advantage of them. I want to share a few examples of the things I have seen. 

My father has the tendency to purchase anything that is suggested to him and I am dealing with a horrible problem with his mail right now. He has signed up to receive so much junk it is ridiculous and the worst part is that companies are willing to invoice him so that when the junk arrives so does a bill. Many of these companies are quite skilled at getting the elderly and people with dementia to buy from them and are also quite good at scamming them. If you are a care giver please be aware of this and work to control and go through the mail of your loved one before they can to get rid of the potential scams and junk mail. 

Another issue I dealt with that was near impossible to get stopped was Internet fraud. Two different “woman”,  convinced my father to send them money through Western Union to a few different African nations. They did this by sending horribly created nudes with a “perfect” body with a “perfect” head photo-shopped on and sent it to him through text and email. They also told him tons of sob stories.  These “women” are actually mostly computer generated and my father was unable to get that. Getting rid of “Candy” was horrible. We had to change his email and cell phone number 3 times. He still to this day believes that "she" is a beautiful woman who is in love with him. 

Examples like these are all to common in our world today and it is up to us as care givers to do all we can to protect those we love. The world is very unsafe for those with dementia because they can be scammed so easy. I am working on totally taking the Internet away from my father to try to combat all types of scam that I can.

Please share anything you have found helpful to protect your loved ones from scams.

Attached are a few resources regarding how easy it is to scam someone with dementia:

Article from Forbes focused on how they target the elderly

Interesting study from the Alzheimer's Foundation

Balloon Day!

Today was the day that Craig was sponsored to go up in the hot air balloon by St. Croix Electric. The day started off early with me picking up Craig at 6:10 AM. We were to the Hudson House by the designated 6:30 AM time and sadly found out that the winds were way to high to go up. Craig was disappointed by this news so I agreed that we should all go on a balloon ride as a family this summer. He likes that idea and we are planning on doing that. And agreed to meet back at 2:15 PM.

At 2:15 we arrived at the Hudson House again and sadly found out it was even more windy then before. Craig took this news well and we agreed to accompany Nancy to pass out fliers at the Hudson Hot Air  Affair grounds. We passed out fliers for about a half hour before my dad started to look really tired. He stated he was ready to go and I brought him home.

While we were waiting for Nancy to meet us we did see some cool things and I snapped this awesome picture of my dad with an ice sculpture.

 I would also encourage anyone with an elderly parent or a family member with dementia to check out First Call by St. Croix Electric. I wish I had known about this before I got my dad into assisted living.

First Call Medical Monitoring

Parade Pictures

I want to start including more things on the blog so I decided to start with pictures. These are pictures from the parade last night.

Nancy had this wonderful sign printed out that got many people's attention. Hudson Fire Department did a wonderful job of attaching the banner. It was great for the ADRC and Hudson Fire Department to partner together. 

Here is my dad with the banner and with the brush truck. This is the fire truck used to fight grass fires. I would like to thank our wonderful sponsor St. Croix Electric. 

Parade day!

Tomorrow is the big day that we go up in a hot air balloon and today was the parade. I remember going to the parade for the Hot Air Fair as a child and remembered how cool it was to have glow sticks. Seeing as I have found out how great the dollar store is for having parties and showers at my home, I thought I would check it out for glow sticks and I found quite the abundance of options. I ended up getting my dad a "fire fighter ax" glow stick and I got a princess wand for myself (pink!). I also found some awesome necklaces. If you are ever having a party and need glow sticks the dollar store is the way to go! 

After work today I headed to happy hour at Red Cedar which was wonderful as always. I had time to to run to the dollar store and to Target then headed back to pick my dad up. At 6:30 we showed up at the fire station and everything was all ready to go. I got our glow sticks ready and we were off to the night-time parade! We rode in a fire truck with a wonderful banner on it that talked about dementia. One of the fire fighters drove and when we got to the announcer booth the announcer gave the most wonderful recognition to my father. He mentioned my dads years of service to the Hudson Fire Department and talked about his dementia. It was very moving. As we got to the end of the parade I noticed a little girl who looked cold and tired. I hopped out and gave her my princess wand. She was so happy! 

After the parade I dropped my dad off and now am getting ready for bed. Tomorrow is the big day and we have to be at the pick up location at 6:30 AM. 

I will update about the balloon ride tomorrow afternoon. 

Self-Care

Today after work I took a self-care day. Self-care days are important for caregivers. They allow us to take care of our self and good self-care allows us to take better care of those we love. I thought today would be a good day to focus on the ways that we can practice good self-care. 

1. Exercise
2. Call a friend
3. Pamper yourself
4. Watch a TV show you love
5. Read a book (or part of one, use caregivers are busy people) 
6. Do another activity you enjoy
7. Paint your nails, or trim them
8. Plan a meal for tomorrow
9. Meditate
10. Color, write, paint or do a craft 

These are just a few ideas for good self care but I am also going to attach resources below. 

This is an interesting article about self-compassion, I think I am going to go more into Self-Compassion later but it is a good time to present this article. 
Self-Compassion

These are good resources about self-care
Self Care for Everyone
Self Care from Caregiver.org

Good Information about Caregiver Stress from the Mayo Clinic
Caregiver Stress


When I first started caring for my father I forgot to take care of me. I was so overwhelmed, stressed and tired. I gained a lot of weight during that time and developed eating habits that were not normal for me.  I also did not have time to exercise. I later found out that these are common things to happen when we begin to care for a loved one.  My adventure into self care started when a wonderful friend of mine introduced me to a group of women who are all very focused on taking good care of themselves after a discussion about my struggles with gaining weight and my newly developed poor eating habits. The woman in the group are supportive and they motivate me to stay on track. These women are very important for my journey into good self-care. 

How you are able to find time to participate in self care is up to you, but I would encourage all care givers to try to practice good self care. Try doing something for you. You will feel better afterwards and have renewed energy to get things done.

I would like for others to post what they do in regards to self care in the comments section. 

Good Communication

This week is turning out to be much busier than I was thinking it was going to be. The finishing details for the Hudson Hot Air Fair are being figured out, and I am awaiting finding out the final schedule. I will keep you updated on those as soon as I know more. Hopefully, the snowstorm today doesn’t isn’t too big!

Today, I thought it would be really important to discuss some of the best communication techniques for talking to someone with dementia. I have learned many of these through communicating with my father but there are also resources that can help you learn more about communication.

Communicating with someone with dementia- My Top Ten:
 1.     Ask clear questions
 2.    Give them plenty of time to answer
 3.    Be understanding
 4.    If you can tell that they are struggling it is ok to help
 5.    It is OK if they forget
 6.    Show them love and compassion
 7.    Ask them questions that will help build their confidence
 8.    Express that you are there for them
 9.    If an answer doesn’t make sense, try to clarify but if you still can’t make sense of it, move on.
 10.  Be honest, someone who has dementia can tell if you are telling a lie to them.

Everyone with dementia is different and it will take time to develop good communication with different dementia patients, but it is important to remember that their doing their best to communicate with you.

Please share if you have developed good communication skills with someone you love who has been diagnosed with dementia.

Here are some resources for communicating with dementia patients:

Resource 1

Resource 2

Resource 3

Neurologist Appt. And Get to Know FTD

Today Craig and I went to the Neurologist. It was the first time I had accompanied him to the Neurologist. I didn't learn much new because I have worked very hard to become very well informed about FTD and to have a good understanding of how the dementia will affect Craig and his actions. I also learned that we will not loose my dad as soon as we thought so yippee! But it did make me realize I have not shared very much information about what FTD is. In the next few days I plan on introducing FTD, FTD research and unveiling resources for families.

This was my first resource I looked at when my dad was diagnosed and it has helped me greatly. 

Frontal Temporal General Information

If you are unable to get the link to work please go to: 

http://www.alz.org/dementia/fronto-temporal-dementia-ftd-symptoms.asp

Emily

New Year Update

Happy New Year!

It’s been a long time since I have posted in this blog and some very big changes have occurred. On Christmas Eve all of our issues with giving my dad adequate and medically competent care came crashing to an end when my Grandfather passed away. See, he had durable power of attorney documents and the only way us kids were going to be able to get power over my dad’s medical care was with guardianship. Now my grandfather was not the best person around, he had a history of abuse. He also was down right in denial about my father’s diagnosis and what it meant for a long term prognosis. His death came as a relief to my siblings and I, and thankfully we will no longer have to go through such difficult family situations in order to help my father in the necessary way.
Some other very big changes are that I have been working with the county dementia care specialist to bring awareness to that young people can get dementia. Many doctors fail to realize that memory loss is abnormal at any age and that is one of the issues we are working on. To bring awareness to that young people suffer from dementia my father and I will be doing a news interview with a big metropolitan news station and will also be being part of the Hudson Hot Air Fair! We will be going up in a balloon to educate people about dementia!
I feel very happy with how our lives are going, but I still realize that there is much work to be done, both with helping my father, and with education of the public