Dementia: Frank and Linda's Story

Louise Morse

Description

This book describes how a new understanding of dementia is leading to better care, helping to maintain the personality of the sufferer. It also offers practical, day to day advice from a hands-on perspective, using a narrative structure. It follows the story of an older couple, Linda and Frank. Frank develops dementia. The story covers the first, early signs and the development of the disease; the couple's struggle to manage and find help, the wife's failing health and the search for a suitable care home, and life after Frank goes to live in the home. An index at the back of the book allows readers to look up help on specific topics. Throughout, the narrative keeps a clear Christian perspective. For example, Linda finds that singing familiar hymns as she dusts around the house not only helps her feel better, but lifts Frank's spirits, too, and he will sometimes join in. Each chapter concludes with a short section of devotions for carers and sufferers.

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780857213594
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright © 2010 by Louise Morse and Pilgrim Homes This edition copyright © 2010 Lion Hudson
The right of Louise Morse to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Monarch Books an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England www.lionhudson.com
ISBN 978 1 85424 930 2 e-ISBN 978 0 85721 359 4
First edition 2010
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan and Hodder & Stoughton Limited. All rights reserved. The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790. Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from The New King James Version copyright © 1982, 1979 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the Authorized Version of the Bible (The King James Bible), the rights in which are vested in the Crown, are reproduced by permission of the Crown’s Patentee, Cambridge University Press. Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
British Library Cataloguing Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Published jointly with Pilgrim Homes, 175 Tower Bridge Road, London SE1 2AL
Cover image: Tom Stewart/Corbis
Table of Contents
Title Page Copyright Page Reviewers and readers write Foreword Introduction: A Sense of Purpose Prayer Who We Are 1. A Day at a Time 2. Truth and Grace 3. Could It Be Dementia? 4. Honouring “Thou” 5. Dealing with the Diagnosis 6. Practical Steps 7. Tipping Points 8. Passport to Good Care 9. Minding the Care Funding Maze 10. Choosing a Care Home 11. Visiting and Spiritual Support 12. Letter from America 13. Fellowship – the Best Preventative Organizations Offering Advice and Help Bibliography Notes
Reviewers and readers write:
“If ever there were a comprehensive book written about dementia, this exceptional paper-back is it. This is truly a well-researched book and Louise Morse is to be congratulated on going way beyond ‘the extra mile’. I endorse the note on the back cover, ‘Every GP should read this book!’ And I would go further: so should we all.”
Cambrensis, Amazon.co.uk
“As a carer for a dementia patient I found the Frank and Linda story to be so helpful in articulating and describing the incremental nature of the illness. Its real strength is in showing the Christian response and context in which the disease can be confronted, which is so contrary to the secular response. Read this book and recharge the batteries of hope, but ensure you have a tissue handy as you read some of the moving moments of reality in dealing with dementia.”
AJ, Amazon.co.uk
“As we are dealing with two people with dementia this book was extremely helpful. Full of ‘helps’ and information, this book could be a wonderful resource to those with family or friends who are suffering in this way.”
D.M. Lodge, Amazon.co.uk.
“This is a book everyone should read, including doctors, nurses and all healthcare workers.”
A. Kid’s Review, Amazon.co.uk
“As the frazzled son and caregiver of a mother who passed away after 16 terrible years fighting an ever-deepening dementia, I read Louise Morse’s book with sympathy and admiration. I have been there and done that. The book is filled with helpful tips and advice that will ease the burden for readers struggling with the challenges of dementia. I recommend it highly.”
Bob Tell, Author of Dementia Diary
“Absorbing … Highly recommended.”
Good Bookstall Review
“It is a sad story of personal loss and grief, but Morse dwells instead on what can be done for both the carer and the cared for, with Christian support. Linda and Frank’s story could be usefully recommended for those daunted by the path ahead.”
The Church Times
“I am a Community Nurse Case Manager, working with elderly clients. I have ordered more copies for friends, my family, clients, and the other community case managers with whom I work. I don’t think a better book on dementia has ever been written.”
C. Luzinski, USA
Foreword
I am pleased to have read this book, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about dementia.
Some forty years ago when I was training at The Bethlem Royal Hospital, I was “posted to Siberia” to work as senior registrar in a unit with forty eight elderly patients, for nearly three years. To my surprise it was warm and friendly and I enjoyed working with depressed and demented patients. One day a tired care assistant joined the lunchtime staff meeting, and said “this place is getting like Bedlam”. We explained to her that it was Bedlam.
Just as the Bethlem had moved on from the Bedlam founded seven centuries earlier (we now had dementia retraining programmes for our patients) so also the care of our elderly patients has changed vastly in the last few decades.
When my mother began to suffer dementia, I learned much more of the problems in caring for her at home. One of my sisters who had cared for our mother herself later died this year, aged ninety, after years of sad suffering with a similar type of dementia. The experiences of what it was like to try and get help from hospitals and care homes for her taught us all much more about dementia.
So, for professional and personal reasons, I was delighted to find in this book many of these problems described in a way which is easy to read. By following one couple (Frank and Linda) the journey of dementia comes alive, and the author illustrates it with many other examples of how to help caregivers and their loved ones who are losing their memories, whose personalities are disintegrating and whose behaviour may be agitated and aggressive at times.
We used to teach medical students that the four letter word in late life problems was loss . This book is especially good at explaining the grief of seeing a loved one being “lost” over a period of months or years with dementia. The grief and loss can become all-pervasive. At such times we all need help from relatives, friends and the community – especially, for Christians, the community of believers.
The reader will find all kinds of helpful information laid out in an attractive form in this book. It shows how bureaucracy can hinder and misdirect the obtaining of help. Only those who know enough can fight for justice for those oppressed with dementia.
This book, with its many examples of the good and bad in caring, its fresh and up-to-date views on how caregivers themselves should be helped more, and its skill in showing how modern technology can help (with the “wandering” patient, or in the constant need for observation of patients who get lost in their own homes) – all this provides a rich mix.
It may challenge many of us to increase knowledge and understanding, to motivate us all to offer more T L C (in the full sense of tender loving care ) and give us the new hope that the book’s title suggests we should look for. The book comes out of many years of work for better care of the elderly.
I hope it helps us all to work together to help solve what will be hugely important problems in the next decades, because of the increased numbers of us who grow older.
Though the book is written for Christians, I consider it to be helpful to anyone who wants to learn more and get better care.
It should be required reading for all those who hold any responsibility for the care of the elderly – including in particular Christian leaders and teachers – and it will be of great encouragement to the caregivers who read it.
Dr Gaius Davies Consultant Psychiatrist
Introduction A Sense of Purpose
The Lord will fulfil his purpose for me; your love, O Lord, endures forever…
P SALM 138:8
Is this book for you?
If you are part of the human race and living on planet earth, then the answer is yes. Not just because no man is an island and, as John Donne wrote, when the bell tolls, it tolls “for thee”, but because the hard statistics show that in a very short time every family on earth will be affected, one way or another, by dementia. In just over thirty years’ time, say the experts, one in three people in the UK will either be a sufferer, a carer, or a relative. Whether your encounter is of the first, the second, or the third kind, this book is designed to give you a better understanding and encouragement. Scientists, public health specialists and governments are coming to grips with dementia, and good things are happening.
In the following chapters you will meet Frank and Linda; real people whose names have been changed. You’ll read how they coped with the challenge of dementia: the help they received, or didn’t, their good days and their bad days. You’ll also meet, in passing, some of the people who have reviewed the chapters. They are specialists in their own fields, all of which touch in some way on the topics covered here, and their insights have been included and attributed in the narrative. The note that follows this chapter describes them briefly: do read it so that you’ll know who they are when you see them mentioned.
The 2009 World Alzheimer’s Report estimates that 35 million people worldwide are living with dementia. This is predicted to rise to 65.7 million by 2030 and 115.4 million by 2050 – 10 per cent higher than the last Alzheimer