Loving Someone Who Has Dementia: How to Find Hope while Coping with Stress and Grief

As a caregiver for my Mom who has alzheimers, this book was full of helpful information about what to expect at each stage of the disease.

I've read several books on caring for my parent with dementia. This book focuses more on the caregiver and their viewpoints and needs. This offered me tremendous validation and support, including resources. It helped me understand my ongoing ups and downs and grief.Strongly recommend this book for the caregivers of dementia patients.

This book was given to me by a friend who read it, found it engaging and thought I would find it helpful. I am the primary caregiver for my mother who has been diagnosed with moderate Alzheimer's. Reading it did help. I opted to read one chapter a night so as to absorb the information. I found a lot of it to be helpful as she gave words and definitions to what I am experiencing.That said, I would like to have seen a chapter on a son/daughter taking care of a mother/father. The opposite sex role she just missed completely. She seemed to think women are the only caregivers and while that is true, the men who are caregivers probably need more guidance as we are new to this and there are fewer of us.A chapter dedicated to dealing with emotional outburts from the parent would have been extremely helpful. Some Alzheimer's patients have a personality change and their language changes with it. My mother uses language she would never use if she were in her right mind. Also she has lost all her modesty. There was no indication on what to do to deal with these outbursts of nastiness which will crop up for no reason and then while the caregiver is trying to digest what happened, the patient has moved on to something else.All in all this is a book I felt was very helpful, so much so I bought four additonal copies for relatives and friends. If you are in a situation of taking care of someone with dementia, I encourage you to read this book. While it is not the be all and end all, it is a good first step.

Ambiguity is My Newfound Path to FreedomI find “ambiguity” as tasty as green eggs and ham, but I DON’T LIKE GREEN EGGS AND HAM! I like certainty – with items on my plate appearing well-organized and appetizing. Dementia makes life messy and gives people who care for them upset stomachs. In “Loving Someone Who Has Dementia,” Dr. Pauline Boss becomes another Dr. Seuss who provides readers a creative approach to managing dementia through the lens of ambiguity.Whereas the reality of dementia is complex, Dr. Boss writes, the joy of ambiguity allows caregivers to use their imaginations, find the middle ground and allow for “both-and thinking.” She believes that ambiguity is the essence of spirituality and caring for patients with dementia requires resilience, compassion and mindfulness. Dr. Boss shows caregivers how to proceed through the maze of ambiguity, reducing their stress and anxiety.As an emergency physician, I care for both patients with dementia and the caregivers who love them. In the tension between duty and empathy, Dr. Boss gave me one piece of sound advice to help resolve conflict between doing more and doing less. She advised me to not know all the answers, but to simply ask, “What would help?” She challenged me to “illuminate ambiguity” with the purpose of adding meaning and hope to the situation.“Uncertainty is my path to freedom” is a mantra I’ve learned through practicing of yoga. It’s a statement that requires introspection and it’s a journey of sorts. Substituting the word “uncertainty” with “ambiguity” allows me to compassionately guide caregivers and dementia patients along their own paths to freedom.

My mom is living with me and I am her 24 hour care taker. I get breaks now and then. She has advanced alz and I belong to support groups but this book goes above and beyond and cleary gives me coping skills along with true insight. I would reccommend it for anyone.

This book widened my view, and is pleasant to read.I think the title is doing a little injustice... because the wise advise in it can be applied to many situations, tha have similarities to loving someone who has dementia. (Ambiguos loss, no lgitimation in the culture, no support from close family, etc.)It is a very useful book.

This book is for caregivers and professionals, and there are many quotes and points made that spoke to me. However one issue that must often crop up for caregivers of spouses is their enforced deprivation of sexual intimacy by the dementia sufferer; I only found one brief passing mention of this. To some caregivers it may not matter, but to others it will represent a massive reduction in comfort and closeness, as well as great sadness. Is the caregiver justified in looking for sex elsewhere, or should they just put up and shut up? Also not mentioned is the likelihood that caregivers will self-medicate with food, alcohol or other substances to reduce their ongoing massive stress, which will hugely impact their struggle for self-care and survival. These are issues I would have liked to see addressed, but were not.

The book contains a couple of good ideas but they are repeated at tedious length. Some carers of dementia patients would benefit by glancing through it

Helped me understand the challenges of dealing with onset of dementia in my family

Very interesting book

this book is very very repetitive, I found it very hard going and I’m sorry to say that I gave up in the end, not for me unfortunately