Families often share, when speaking about their loved one with dementia, “He just won’t get up out his chair.” Or, “I can’t seem to get Mom out the door for a walk anymore.”
When I suggest to my friend Lola that it is a beautiful day for a walk and that I wonder if she would like to join me, she most often replies, “No. You know, my get up and go has got up and went. And that’s just not like me.”
She is correct; her get up and go has got up and went, and this is a common phenomenon with dementia.
And she is also correct that this is just not like her…not like the younger version of her at all.
It happens quite early in the dementia process that the brain’s ability to help us initiate activity, to help us get up and go, begins to fail. Therefore, folks with dementia often spend far more time sitting in a chair, far more time staring out a window, than family dreamed possible. Families remember the vibrant, active version of their loved one with dementia.
It is easy for families to become frustrated, maybe even become disgusted. They may take their loved one to the doctor for depression. And while depression may be an issue, it is often a secondary issue to a primary problem of the brain’s diminishing ability to initiate, to get up and go.
So what do we do? First, understand this issue, and that the person with dementia is truly helpless to fix this issue (dementia is progressive and to date there are no interventions that reverse the course).
Then, get some good dementia training. We are DAWN Dementia Specialists on purpose, and we recommend every family walking the dementia journey read the two books authored by Judy Cornish, founder of The DAWN Method. Within these books you will find tools, hope, understanding, and help.
Next, remember that it will take something or someone in the environment to create enough of a reason for your loved one to get up and go. Using dementia-specialist strategies to invite folks into activity you know they have loved in the past may give them a good reason to get up out of that chair. Using technology in strategic ways to bring YouTube videos, or old home movies, or online tours of the Louvre, etc. into their days may give them something they love to look at besides staring out the window. At Better People Care, we use person-centered, strength-based, dementia-specialist strategies every day to help folks remain engaged in the world.
But let me make a brief disclaimer: sitting in a chair, and staring out the window are not all bad. Sometimes they are the ways the person with dementia brings a sense of peace back to the confusing world in which they live. We just know that too much of sitting and too much of staring begins a downward spiral of weakness, falls, inactivity, disengagement, decline. And this downward spiral can mostly be prevented.
One other note for the caregivers among us: if your own get up and go is getting up and leaving due to the load of caregiving and the load of life, begin setting yourself up for the help and support that you will likely need through the dementia journey.
Grateful for my brave teachers who are living with dementia,
Jill
©Jill Couch