Caregiving in the Dog Days of Summer offers numerous tips for helping Alzheimer’s patients and other elder citizens beat the heat.  It’s also an interesting article because the author tells of his father’s experience and reasons for wanting a basement apartment  rather than one on an upper floor with a view.
                                     Since I live in the United States, I naturally think of beating the heat in summer at this time of year.  In other regions of the world, you may be considering ways to keep warm or beat the cold!
Caregivers need to be particularly sensitive to the needs of Alzheimer’s …read more

As summer weather reaches its peak and hot humid days are numerous, it sometimes becomes a challenge to keep the Alzheimer’s patient adequately hydrated.  They don’t understand the need to drink frequently.  So if they don’t feel like drinking water, juice, or some other liquid, they may simply refuse it, even clamping their mouth tightly shut.
 I experienced this difficulty with Mother.  Even though she used to tell us, when we were children, to drink a lot in summer, she no longer understood that reasoning.
So I had to develop strategies to get her to drink more.  I also noticed, when she …read more