Interview With Our Amazing Volunteer Caregiver

Kenny Sexton lives with his extended family on the property in back of us. That property used to be owned by the first owner of our home, and there are barns and two dwellings there. At one point this property used to have a rodeo as pictured above.  

Various people have rented back there and now Kenny and his extended family live in dwellings (not shown) back there. Even though they are right in back, to get there I would have to jump the fence or drive back there on a dirt road a house away from us. No longer. As I wrote earlier, Wayne has installed a single gate to join the properties.

Kenny Sexton is a younger man on disability who now, despite his disabilities, volunteers to check on my husband while I work, using that gate. I finally had a chance to interview him on his great service to us.

Carol: How and why did you come to take care of my husband?

Kenny: We were talking with each other over the fence and I told you what I had done in the past and volunteered to help you if you needed help.

Carol: I remember thinking that this summer I could introduce you and my husband and see how it went. Never did I realize how soon I would need you. Things went faster than expected and while my husband was in the hospital, Wayne installed the gate making it easier for you to come to the French doors at the back of our property.

Kenny: I realized you needed help right now because he was more confused and you couldn't leave him alone. His doctor wanted to put him in a nursing home and I didn't feel this was the correct decision.

Carol: I didn't know what we were going to do, but was so glad that you were stepping in to volunteer. Tell our readers how you gained the insight into helping Alzheimer's care receivers.

Kenny: There was a time in my life when I ended up in a nursing home and I observed Alzheimer's patients because I lived with them.

Carol: You enable me to leave the home and not worry about my husband because you are checking in on him. You will see that he gets his morning pills and then text me that he has had them.That one Saturday night when hubby would not get off the John, I called you and you came right over and advised me what to do, and helped me get him in the car so I could take him to emergency again. Why do you so willingly give of yourself to be there for us now? 

Kenny: You know, Carol, I feel that God moved us here for a reason and part of the reason is that I get up in the morning so I can serve you all. If I wouldn't be active, I wouldn't get better myself and not be listening to what God has said to me. 

Carol: This is such an incredible blessing to me right now. THANK YOU, LORD! How have you approached working with my husband? Give us an example.

Kenny: I try to be respectful in working with your husband. I don't want him to feel that I am looking down on him. I try to give him his space. One day when I was fixing his lunch, a BBQ sandwich that I warm up and give him along with his yogurt and coconut oil fudge, he said to me, "I could get used to this!" I knew then that he appreciated my checking in on him. 

Carol: Before you came, I would come home and his cold sandwich, yogurt and coconut oil fudge would still be in the refrigerator and he had not had his morning pills. We both have trouble getting him to take his morning pills. How do you do it? 

Kenny: I tell him, If you take your pills, I will go ahead and leave. Then he would take them right away and I would leave out of the back of the house chuckling to myself.

Carol: We learn how to deal with them by trial and error. When I couldn't get him to shave one evening, in disgust I left the house and texted you. Do you remember that evening?

Kenny: I called you and told you that sometimes we have to get out of the situation.

Carol: I was so relieved that you said that. This was still when he was recovering from that nasty UTI infection and I feared we had a worsening of the Alzheimer’s.

Kenny: When do you think you might make the decision to put him in a nursing home.

Carol: I am not ready for that and actually have a fantasy that he can live here all his days. However, as I interviewed Dolores, Latane and Dana on this blog, these fine ladies taught me that it may happen someday. I have seen others in my Alzheimer's Association Support group who were able to care for their care receiver with the help of Hospice. The LORD will be there for me. I am assured of that and try to live each day knowing that the future is in His capable hands. He gives me encouragement along the way, such as a happenstance Christian caregiver right in my backyard!

Kenny: How has having a husband with Alzheimer's enriched your life, or has it been a detriment?

Carol: First, Kenny, even though I am semi-retired and in my 60s it has forced me to grow up in so many ways. Financially, I have to plan. Time management. Simplifying our home which I blog about with The House That Cleans Itself. Taking care of my own health by diet and exercise. I have a thyroid scan next month and now am off of thyroid medicine until that test. I monitor my blood pressure. When hubby was going through his UTI my blood pressure shot up to 144/95. Early this morning it was a wonderful 101/62. Also I value my faith with meditation on God's Word, prayer and disciplined intercession for others.

Kenny: I see that you genuinely care about your husband and struggle with the upkeep of the house but do well. I also see how you bridge the gap with youth with your tales of your rapping when you substitute teach. I think this blog you have been writing may help others as well.

Carol: Thanks so much for letting us interview each other on my notebook computer around the dining room table with hubby watching old movies in the same room. I look forward to the next interview of you on your health issues.

I am now off to substitute teach this afternoon. When I come home, Kenny will have popped over to check on hubby. Thank you LORD, and thank you Kenny!

Routines

I recycle the Lipton Diet Green Tea bottles. I am using half Ocean Spray diet cranberry juice and half tea. Cranberry juice helps prevent UTIs. My husband loves this drink and I tell him that along with regular showers (two minimum per week) and cranberry juice helps.

Before he got over this UTI infection, I thought that both shaving and showering would be a problem. I bought a $4 estate sale shower chair shown at the right. I put it in the shower, but hubby wanted nothing to do with something that makes him feel old and he really has bounced back and gotten his strength back.

In fact, I can't tell that this UTI infection made him go into a further stage of Alzheimer's. He is the same fun self and I love spending time with him. He likes to go on errands with me. He lives in the now like I should. Buying that shower chair was premature.

What is not premature, is working on good routines. Even though there is a check list on his clipboard, he doesn't always abide by it. I read we caregivers need to reinforce good routines early on and we will be thankful we did later on. I am continuiing to enforce shaving every other day and regular showers. The routine of taking pills is not easy. He doesn't like to take them. Thankfully I have neighbor Kenny to get him to take his pills when I leave the house in the morning. Sunday night I went to bed, before I saw him take his pills, and I found them in a napkin Monday morning.

I have been so impressed with how Davina is taking care of her mother-in-law. I asked her about showering and she gave me these pictures of the shower put into the mother-in-law's house with a seat and grab bars.
.

In addition to grab bars, they have the portable shower head.

Caring.com here and Carole Larkin here on the Alzheimer's Reading Room offer tips on bathing and showering our loved ones with Alzheimer's. So far hubby is able to do all of this for himself. He doesn't want anything that looks like this product either.

So for the time being, shaving and showering is not the problem I thought it would be while DH was recovering from the UTI and he seems like his old self, still fiesty about taking pills, but seemingly in the same state of normal as before his hospitalizations and infection. He just asked me, when are we going to bed? I told him when he took his pills, and he took his pills!, although earlier in the evening he had complained about those pills.

Thank you, LORD! Help me to navigate

this caregiving with insight.

Our Thirteenth Anniversary Today

Menu Cover

Our anniversary didn't go the way I expected it to go today. Not at all. It wasn't that we don't love each other very much; it's just the effect of the disease.

A year ago I wrote about our twelfth anniversary here. Two years ago we were camping here and hubby and I wrote each other cards. I saw on that blog post that he wrote on mine:

Do other place I'd like to be than here.
No other person I'd rather be with than you.

I have to find those cards. Think they are part of stuff to still go through in the guest bedroom. What if that is the last romantic thing he writes to me before Alzheimer's takes him further down the road?

This morning started with my giving hubby three main pills: Metforman for Diabetes, Antibiotic for UTI and Imodium for Antibiotic. Later I would give him the rest, skipping pills such as the fish oil tablet which really makes him complain.

"Pill pusher," he said.

"No I am a lovegiver," I said. "I love you and always want the best for you."

Lovegiver is a word I started using almost a year ago when I read and reviewed Mark Shriver's book on his famous father. He used it and I think it is the best way to describe caregiving of your loved one. I must admit that I have been frustrated with the UTI and the disease of Alzheimer's in the last week. I canceled sub jobs to try to get a handle on helping hubby. Our "normal" is again changing.

"So you want to take your shower first or shall I?"

"You go ahead first," he said and he went back to bed. This grand gesture to let me shower first isn't necessarily the gentleman in hubby, but might be the disease. I have read about the lack of motivation with these patients. I was determined to not punish or be the sergeant today. It is our anniversary after all.

Georgene my blogging friend at Living on Less Money put a quote from Joni and Ken: An Untold Love Story on Facebook on Sunday.

We all dream dreams and know very well that they don’t always work out. Life is particularly hard on high expectations. Things hardly ever fall together the way we would have scripted them. The fact is, if we put our hope in a certain set of circumstances working out in a certain way at certain times, we’re bound to be disappointed because nothing in this life is certain.

So what’s the solution? To give up on dreams?

No, it is to realize that if we belong to God, there are even bigger dreams for our lives than our own. But in order to walk in those bigger dreams, we may face greater obstacles than we ever imagined and find ourselves compelled to rely on a much more powerful and magnificent God than we ever knew before.

I want my script to be that hubby will stay in one stage of the disease. We may be back to fairly normal after the UTI. This is my script for our 13th Anniversary.

Denny's waitress put
this in my carry out.

We were scripted to go to local restaurant Buddy Freddie's with our friends I blog often about--Sally and Jake. This script didn't work. We didn't go out. We brought in. Instead Sally and Jake came by because hubby was slow moving. Jake stayed with hubby and Sally suggested we go to Denny's and get breakfast for the four of us and bring it back to our home. Our wonderful waitress Chasity heard that she was providing an anniversary meal for one couple to share with another couple and she told me a wonderful story of a man who would come into a restaurant where she used to work with his wife who had Alzheimer's; they would clear the ladies room and he would go in with her so she wouldn't get confused. My husband is in no way that bad off as that wife--take note. He is very sharp. He compensates very well. But we know that dementia is different for everyone.

We brought the Denny's breakfast for the four of us back to our home and we ate at our dining room table about 11:00--all but hubby who refused his bacon waffle breakfast but enjoyed the company.

Below are anniversary cards on the mantel of the fireplace.


Cards with hubby's horse collection






 Hubby's Blue Mountain card at the right said:
Anniversaries are sweet, joyful confirmations. They are milestones in life, looking back on a memory-filled past. They are touchstones for the future, linking together plans and dreams. When two people share so much, their days, their hopes, and their journey, there is little that compares with the smiles that can shine in the hearts of a husband and a wife. Anniversaries are blessings the passing years bring. And they are beautiful reminders that nothing is better than being with the one you love all the days of your life.

My Hallmark card at the left said on the cover:
When I found you my heart knew it was home. Inside it read: There is a safe and quiet place in this noisy, busy, crazy world, and we have found it together.

And Sally and Jim's card had two dogs on the cover who were quoted: It's always fun to buddy up with you. On the inside Sally had written Your friendship means so much to both of us.

Next on the agenda was a 1 pm doctor appointment with husband's doctor. Before that appointment a suggestion came from a family member that hubby needed to be in rehab at a certain excellent center until he got stronger. We went by that facility on the way to the doctor's office. They did have a spot.

At the doctor's office hubby needed help and a wheel chair to get inside. He was that weak. I rushed into the office and invaded the back office, apologize and said I needed help to get my hubby inside for his appointment. Two nurses went out with a wheel chair.

My husband's doctor listened to the situation and said to me before my husband:

Yes he can go there and he may not return home!

That doctyor had also said to me in the hospital last week, Your know, Carol, he is not going to get any better. As we left I told Dr. Chevy that this is our thirteenth anniversary. The plan was that we would go home and that facility would come and interview us today or tomorrow and the doctor was already faxing the form to them. Not your usual happy anniversary to be split up.

Was this in God's providence for our anniversary? On the way home I kept telling hubby how much I love him and that I have his best interest in mind. Was this God's best? I did not know and still do not know. I drove to the front door on our circular drive and hubby got out with the help of a neighbor.

Then I get a call from the facility that they don't take Preferred Care. Hubby will not be going there and we have more time to decide and more time at home. So glad.

Lord, even as my hubby is sleeping now,

bring me sleep and help me to trust that

You are the one who is scripting our days. Amen. 

Back to Hospital



Cranberries Are Good for UTIs


I have a different husband than I had last Sunday, but I have to remember that the prognosis is good.

Saturday hubby was napping in the morning, hardly ate lunch, napping in the afternoon, hardly ate dinner. Hubby was weak, his pulse fast, and he was going down hill.

At 8:30 pm Saturday night I contacted Kenny and asked him to help me get hubby in bed. Bur rather than just get him in bed Kenny gently urged that I take hubby back to emergency and helped me get hubby into the car so I could drive him there. Kenny has seen these problems before (I will interview him in another post). Hubby went through similar tests for the next hours until the culprit was discovered about 11:30 as a UTI or uninary tract infection.

For several years I have been following the Bob DeMarco's Alzheimer's Reading Room which often warns of a UTI, or a uninary tract infection. Many times older people get it. Carole Larkin herself has written here about it and has Bob when his mother would get it. They are treated with antibiotics such Bactrim, Septra, Larotid, Moxatag, Furadantin, Macrodantin, Ampicillin, Cipro, and Levaquin. Hubby was prescribed Macrobid 100 mg. oral capsule 100 mg twice a day. Another pill to get down him!

More women get it than men do but if a patient has diabetes it is common. My husband has diabetes and he is less ability to say how he feels.

I looked up information about it and discovered that this may be a continual problem. That National Kidney and Urologic Disease web site [http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/kudiseases/pubs/utiadult/#tract] said:

Men are less likely than women to have a first UTI. But once a man has a UTI, he is likely to have another because bacteria can hide deep inside prostate tissue. Anyone who has diabetes or a problem that makes it hard to urinate may have repeat infections. . . .Most UTIs are not serious, but some infections can lead to serious problems, such as kidney infections. Chronic kidney infections—infections that recur or last a long time—can cause permanent damage, including kidney scars, poor kidney function, high blood pressure, and other problems. Some acute kidney infections—infections that develop suddenly—can be life threatening, especially if the bacteria enter the bloodstream, a condition called septicemia.

Something was mentioned in the emergency room Tuesday night about hubby's kidney, but I did not catch what they were saying. I am concerned and of course will follow up with a doctor visit.
MedicineNet.com said:

There can be many complications of urinary tract infections, including dehydration, sepsis, kidney failure, and death. If treated early and adequately, the prognosis is good for most patients with a UTI.

Meanwhile today I am just plain tired and discouraged. Had wanted to go to church or just to Skype church, but I missed the call for Skype and went back to sleep. Hubby needs to shower and shave if we go anywhere and he is motivated for nothing.  He will get better. Going to take him to the doctor early in the week--if I can get him there--motivated to get in the car.

Me? I don't know what to do with me. Huge test of faith again. "Do the next thing," someone once said. I am trying to decide what that might be.

Hubby in Hospital--Part One

Yesterday morning I picked up Jake and drove Jake and hubby to the Senior Center where they spend Tuesdays. Jake finished his breakfast in the car but hubby still had his breakfast and had not swallowed his pills in the car. With the air of a staff sergeant I brought hubby's breakfast and morning pills into the Senior Center. Later in the day I would attend the 2 pm monthly Alzheimer's Association Support Group at First Baptist and either Sally or I would pick up the husbands.

Sally took care of a sick grandchild yesterday and did not go to the support group. She picked up our husbands about 3 pm. She came to the support group with the grandchild leaving the two husbands in her car and said that my hubby was not himself. He had not taken his pills, not eaten his breakfast nor eaten the Senior Center lunch. He had sat at the center all day. Jake was very concerned as Sally was.

I left the meeting and Sally drove hubby to where our car was parked. It took some coaching to get hubby into our car. When we got home I decided to take him to the front of the house rather than through the garage where with all the junk there and the step up to the family room. I figured easy access to the front door and no step up was the best route to his easy spot by the big screen TV.

However, hubby was not getting out of the car. I feared the worse--a stroke, although he could stick out his tongue. I called his primary care physician's office and proceeded to the emergency room at the hospital where I had gone myself last December in an ambulance.  I could get him there quickly myself without waiting for an ambulance and having to pay some of the ambulance cost that insurance doesn't cover.

After the four plus hours, the emergency room staff ruled out a urinary tract infection or a stroke. I requested  food for him and finally some came about 8:30 PM. He ate only a little--the only food all day. He had some apple sauce and a little bit of turkey, and a taste of jello.

The decision was made to admit him for further observation. I drove home last night so ready to cry. With melatonin from the health food store I was able to get maybe six hours of sleep and I came back to the hospital with this notebook computer where I am typing now and with my iPhone and its charger for contact with people outside the hospital. So glad you can use those devices in the hospital now.

The nurse came in this morning to give hubby his medicine.

Nurse: Give me your name and your date of birth.

Hubby had some trouble with these two instructions. I explained to the nurse that she asked him two questions and he only responds to one idea at a time.

"By law you have to give the date of birth when I give you your medicine," my husband's nurse said.

He was able to give his name and date of birth finally with one question at a time. 


Me to the nurse: What if they have dementia and can't give you their date of birth?

Nurse: I keep going until they can answer something-- maybe they can give the year.

Me: He can't give you that. (He will just cover himself by saying that he doesn't bother with those details because he can check a calendar for the year.)

She proceeded to give him his medicine in apple sauce! I have to try that!

APPLE SAUCE!

The answer for the Pill Pusher me!

In order to be released, my husband needs to see the neurologist. Also, he is really shakey on his feet.



pottery dog, apple sauce



Perhaps hubby is going into a further stage of Alzheimer's. Out of ignorance or bliss I considered my husband in the first stage of Alzheimer's. Stages are different for everyone. Last year a nurse and reporter had contacted me to use hubby as proof of coconut oil. The reporter said I wasn't giving him enough, however, but whatever I have given him I feel has kept him fairly functional for a long time (since December of 2008).

Hubby kept asking: When was the last time we were home? When can I leave this jail? He told the nurse, I have seen you for two weeks. (He has no concept of time now.) I bring a ceramic dog to the hospital and he has this nicknack on his chest, reminding him of our dog.

I am sleepy here at the hospital. Going in search of coffee or caffeine. Thanks for your prayers, folks.

Habits



From Facebook

 

 The more you do something, the more it becomes a good or bad habit. I teach about habits when I teach a class for DUI offenders. I often use this anonymous quote.

I am your constant companion. I am your greatest helper or heaviest burden. I will push you onward or drag you down to failure. I am completely at your command. Half the things you do, you might just as well turn over to me and I will be able to do them quickly and correctly.

I am easily managed—you must merely be firm with me. Show me exactly how you want something done, and after a few lessons, I will do it automatically. I am the servant of all great men, and alas, or all failures as well. Those who are great, I have made great. Those who are failures, I have made failures.

I am not a machine, though I work with all the precision of a machine plus the intelligence of a man. You may run me for a profit or run me for ruin—it makes no difference to me.

Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I will place the world at your feet. Be easy with me, and I will destroy you. Who am I?

I am Habit.

So I worked on a new habit today--getting to my substitute job ahead of time. It felt good. But it is not a habit yet. Often times there is a situation at home such as my husband taking his morning pills and I barely make it to school in time or have to call to say I am on my way. They are happy that I call and that I come to cover a class. But how much better to get somewhere on time! I am also realizing when hubby and I go somewhere and have to be there by a certain time, plan to leave in plenty of time. Time means so little to him--I have to be the time keeper.

Today I substituted in a Math in high school. After taking roll in first period I noticed a young lady in the corner of the room and noise was coming from an obvious cell phone. I went over to her, observed that her cell phone was plugged into the wall to charge it and asked her to put it up. She said she couldn't turn it off or she would lose her game. It turns out that she entered my classroom and acted like she was enrolled in that class.  After she was removed the other students said that she must be a new student and one reflected that she only comes there when there is a substitute! Her cell phone is her habit--a bad one. She may skip her first period to go find a substitute, park herself in that class, and charge her cell there. Hopefully her bad habit was busted today.

21 days to change to a new habit I have heard. When someone has Alzheimer's it may be more than 21 days. I put a little love note in my husband's morning pills now to get him motivated to take those pills before I leave the house. I also take my pills at the same time. He does remember that I ended up in the hospital when I took his pills, so I say take you pills so I don't accidentally take yours again. This habit is a constant struggle.

I have also heard to establish routines early in Alzheimer's. I got my husband an electric shaver for Christmas. Now getting him to use it is a real struggle. It would be safer for him to use this instead of shaving with a razor. He doesn't always want to shave every day and it seems to me that he can use his charged shaver while he sits and watches TV. This is not his habit, but my struggle. He may win this one, like he keeps winning not wanting to mow the lawn. My patience is tried again and again.

But then, again, I struggle with some of my own habits, like recording the food that I eat ("tracking") for Weight Watchers and my housekeeping habits.

People in the classes for DUI offenders that I teach get the following quotes about habits on my Power Point presentation:

• “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are alone supreme.”               --Calvin Coolidge

"We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons."-- Jim Rohn

• "The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail."--Napoleon Hill

• "This one step—choosing a goal and sticking to it—changes everything."--Scott Reed

• "Things start out as hopes and end up as habits."--Lillian Hellman

Lord, give me patience with my husband
and persistence with my own habits.
I can change more than he can.

This and That TWO

So thankful for all of you who have prayed during my health scare that I wrote about earlier this week.

The Pill Pusher. My husband's pills are so powerful that they landed me in the hospital. Many days we argue about his taking them in the morning before I leave to substitute teach. Then I can call him and remind him to take them and have even come home and he hasn't taken them. He has considered me a real nag. I made an executive decision. I have long known that routine is so important for Alzheimer's patients. This is why Jake and DH are going to the Senior Center once a week now--getting used to a routine--Sally's brilliant idea. My husband's routine of the clipboard schedule for the day also works; one side shows his schedule and the other side shows mine. We have different pill boxes now and a new routine. Now we both take our medicine at 7 am and 7 pm and that is on the typed schedule. I reinforce this by reminding him that he doesn't want me to take his pills again and land in the hospital.

Garage door is fixed. Just off track. I got explanation on how to put it back on track. Only a $35 service call. Hubby used to understand this and so I didn't bother learning about it. Also I need to learn how to use our expensive carpet cleaner and will go to a vacuum cleaner repair man to find out how. Hubby no longer knows. About a year ago we had a professional come in and clean carpets and now stains have come up from that experience--from the mud they left when the carpet didn't dry. We really can't afford to re-carpet the whole house. I guess stained carpeting is better in case one of us falls again as I did on Tuesday. But the stains are so noticeable.

Making Christmas simple. Decided to not make counted cross stitch for niece and nephew in California. Maybe next year when my wrists are better. Making three next generation educational quilts where there are young children in the family. That cleaned-off pool table provides room to cut them out.  Had hoped to mail these today, but my recent hospitalization happened. Other gifts have been mailed or are ready to be delivered.

Christmas letters are nowhere done--I have always done these in the past even with my late husband. I have bought Christmas cards and may send some of them. Or really, I think I would just like to call people. Whatcha think? People's preferred means of communication so confusing these days! Facebook. Facebook messaging. Texting. Snail mail/yearly Christmas cards. Phone call. Maybe I will do a combination of contacts.

Breaking News on the School Shooting in CT. 

Hug your family and friends!

The Pill Pusher and Other Routines

Tuppleware cup with pills now works

We were out late last night. We both forgot our pills last night because we were out to midnight after a wedding and came home tired and the PILL PUSHER (me) forgot to take the pills to the reception and forgot to have us take our pills when we came home.

Pill-taking has been trial and error. Sometimes hubby refuses to take pills if it isn't in the routine that works. He has often forgotten pills in the SUN-SAT pill container even though those are in plain sight. But routine does work with dementia patients.
 
Alzheimer's patients like routine, but not always variety. Hubby's meal routines work for us when I have to leave the house. For breakfast DH has coffee usually or Diet Lipton Green Tea, one Emerald Breakfast on the go! packet, unsweetened applesauce that I put in a little container (I keep several in the frig) and two "ice cubes" of coconut oil fudge I have written about on this blog. His pills come out of a Sun-Sat AM pill box that I put in a little Tuppleware cup on the plate.  Lunch will be on  plate in the frig when I am gone: a sandwich in a baggie, yogurt with blueberries added and crunchies, and two more coconut oil fudge "ice cubes", a lunch that he rarely  needs to warm up because most of the time it is just a sandwich.  I use this pill tupperware cup at dinner for his PM pills as well (just didn't work last night).

This morning I left the house at 6:30 AM for my 7 AM Weight Watcher meeting before assembling my husband's simple breakfast above, letting him sleep in. I thought I would be home in time for us to have breakfast together. Instead I called him to tell him how to put it together so I could go to breakfast after Weight Watchers with two ladies. On the phone I gave him one idea at a time: get the breakfast packet, etc. He was able to do this because this simple breakfast he has many days is part of his routine. He likes to feel he can do things.

He even called my cell this morning  to see how he could feed our dog. He remembered that he is supposed to ask me each morning if I have fed the dog and if The Pill Pusher has had her pills--then he checks these off on his clipboard schedule for the day. Routine is soooo important for Alzheimer's patients.

So in summary on routines:

• Clipboard schedule with activities to check off. Schedule also has phone numbers on it. Husband requested schedule some time ago and it works for us because he knows he has dementia and needs reminders.
• Tuppleware with pills on the breakfast and dinner plate so that Pill Pusher doesn't have to nag.
• Keep items in the same place. Don't change where the cell phone gets plugged in for example!

But oh those cell phones and keys! I am the one that needs to have a routine to check on these things!