“User Manual”

Life is unique in that it gives you the test first and sets the lesson after.
~Oscar Wilde

Okay, Alzheimer’s user manual, where were you? I needed you.

Nothing fired me up more than being stuck in a nothing-is-working situation and needing fast answers with zero info anywhere. I’d rack my brain to overload trying to figure ways to get Russ to take his medicine without a big brouhaha. Or to step into the shower, change his clothes, ward off anxiety, anything! I couldn’t possibly be the first caregiver with these dilemmas, could I? So why was it so hard to find desperately needed tricks of the trade?

And therein lay the Alzheimer’s caregiver’s dilemma. Plenty of information exists on the disease, but unearthing hands-on, nuts-and-bolts caregiver tips and strategies in a concise, consolidated format—impossible! I scrounged up odd tidbits of information here and there, such as laying a dark mat in front of a doorway to prevent an exit (the darkness looks like a black hole), and placing bluing agent in the toilet bowl to define its opening (bluing identifies the bowl within the mono-colored toilet). Who knew? Fabulous tips, for sure. But as for a compilation of the myriad ways to make complicated, fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants, caregiver life easier? Outta luck.

And that’s how the show went down. Experiment. Hit or miss. Learn as you go. Why didn’t caregiver classes, support groups, and the masses of reading materials ever offer specialized, nitty-gritty caregiver tips for Alzheimer’s unique challenges? Forget the data and generalized information that’s everywhere. In a caregiving crisis, who gives a hoot about data? Caregivers want one to see one of these: The Alzheimer’s Caregiver Survival Handbook: Everything You Need to Know They Don’t Tell You, or The Alzheimer’s Behavioral Tip Guide, or even The Comprehensive Alzheimer’s User Manual for Caregivers.

How about it, folks? Let’s get crackin’!

Honest emotion: Working from nothing