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Meet fellow Caregivers - Introduce yourself

Caregivers | Last Active: Nov 12, 2023 | Replies (707)
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@djangomay2

Thanks very much for your suggestions. I don't think my wife is really capable anymore of activities like folding laundry. Sometimes her aides put on French music and that seems to perk her up. My real desire is to expose her to more stimulation, rather than just have her sit in a wheelchair all day. But I don't know what kind of stimulation will work best for her. Pet therapy is a good idea. We even tried a mechanical cat that purred etc, but she didn't seem to relate to that much at all. Possibly a guinea pig, which was a favorite animal of hers while we were living in Australia. My wife Christine was a very active person, who was a docent at the Melbourne, Australia Zoo, drove around the entire periphery of Australia by herself, was held by the Vietcong for a few days in Vietnam, etc. So it's sad to see her doze most of the time. It could be that she's not really capable of doing much anymore, but I want to experiment with more stimulation than she's getting at present.

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Scott, Volunteer Mentor | @IndianaScott | Sep 11, 2020

Hi @djangomay2 Nice to have you here in the Mayo Connect caregiving discussion group. I'm Scott and I was my wife's caregiver during her 14+ year war with brain cancer. I also was a secondary caregiver for my mother-in-law who had dementia and lived in St. Paul.
I agree it is terribly difficult to find resources, get a quality check on them, and utilize them -- often blindly. I, too, found little of help since my wife was too young for Medicare and we didn't qualify for Medicaid. It was far too much trial and error and monitoring. Often with truly crummy results.

While every patient and disease path is unique, I know in my wife's case I had to 'go with her flow' on what she was interested in doing or capable of doing. We'd had pets our entire married lives, but they quickly became too intrusive for her as did TV, radio, music, visitors, etc. I ended up with loads of books, kits, etc. that never hit their mark and remained unopened.

Let me know if I can help with any specific questions you might have.

Strength, courage, and peace

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