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Introductions: Are you caring for someone with dementia?

Caregivers: Dementia | Last Active: Mar 17 6:30pm | Replies (762)
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@caregiver49

Fibbing can be helpful depending on stage. EXample; Your car is in the shop. The people in the house are helping me prepare it to paint, carpet. Etc.....you might have a friend that needs to stay with you until repairs are made on her flooded house and she is repaying you and your loved ones generosity by helping around the house. And you will be glad when she can go back home too. But now she needs our help. There is no end to helpful fibbing even though it might be only useful short term, even moments. When wanting to eat too often you might try dinner is in the oven, or you are waiting for the pizza man to deliver. My mom would brush cob webs from the house if I began to and asked her to take over for me while I had to tend to something else. Raking leaves is harmless too if secure from street. She would sometimes stay busy with it for awhile, giving her a bit of exercise. Music on a radio while outside may help them feel more connected to surroundings. When possible pick up lunch to go and save to heat up for dinner as lunch is much cheaper.Pastas, Thai, Chinese food reheat well. This will take some pressure off of caregiver and give some variety to all. I always agree and never say don't you remember? I'll see what I can do might interrupt the thought they are stuck on. This is a long, slow slog with few signposts. What works today probably won't work long.
Aside from this I just learned that depending on what state you live in, should you reach a point you need to have loved one move to care facility although after spending down to qualify the gov can recover what it spent on their care from estate after death. This started in 2009 I believe and is a change from how it used to be handled. Hope this helps@@

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Replies to "Fibbing can be helpful depending on stage. EXample; Your car is in the shop. The people..."
safetyshield | @safetyshield | Sep 22, 2016

Lying or fibbing to anyone can have its consequences. In my family experience lying is an easy out than dealing with the negative of telling the truth. But it has its down sides. Eventually for what ever reason my family lied to me, I always found the truth and that made me madder than if they bothered to tell the truth. As a child my parents excuse was it was for my own good. But as I got older the lying did not stop. It just became the easy way out. Even when I call out on knowing that they lied. They seemed not to either care or understand the consequences that lying on our family relationship. Even as a counselor when working with clients and their family I stress that lying will bite them in the butt one day, I believe that one should tell a loved one the truth. It might need some creativity and thoughtfulness but for you and others involved it would be emotionally satisfying. You can now rationalize about the lying but to you and others involved it will have an impact . With parents or loved ones that are losing their memories and get upset easily lying maybe the easiest solution for you but again it will impact your relationship with other family members, relatives, friends and yourself. If you need to discuss other concerns and would like to run it through this group please do. Your health is a concern for all of us on this connect network of concerned people

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Scott, Volunteer Mentor | @IndianaScott | Sep 23, 2016

@safetyshield I agree. Lying just leads to some really tough situations, especially in caregiving. I always made sure I told the truth. I may not have gone into all the tiniest of details, but I never wanted anyone to come back and accuse me of not sharing. Plus there was always a huge amount of sharing of what I said to anyone between folks so they 'compared notes' on me constantly.

When it came to my wife we made a pact very early in her journey she could always count on me to tell her the truth. It eased her worry a bit.

And on an unrelated, but related note, coming from a very dysfunctional, alcoholic family communicating was not always my powerful suit -- but I sure did realize lying just screwed up all communicating to the point of damaging yourself and others.

Peace and strength,

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