Preventing Her Shutdown: Losing My Wife To Alzheimer´s
by Sammie MarsalliPublish: Jun 15, 2022Advice & How To Biographies & Memoirs General NonfictionBook Overview
Preventing Her Shutdown Losing My Wife To Alzheimer's is an inside look of what a typical ongoing caregiver husband goes through in my desperate effort to keep my wife with Alzheimer's "connected". She is in the advanced stages as she doesn't speak.This book started out as a daily diary of my caregiving as my wife's behavior was dramatically changing daily. Writing was not only therapeutic and "alleviated" my continuous sorrow but also helped me invent therapies and activities to interact with her continuous behavioral changes.
Soon this diary became this book where readers will witness an ongoing caregiver´s successes and failures.
No one has the "exact key" as to how to respond to Alzheimer's radical behavioral changes as there are no two profile behavioral changes alike, not even in the same stage of the disease. There isn't a standard set therapy to apply. Even the stages of Alzheimer's vary in their characteristics. Only your experiences can be your guide. “What works for me may not work for you.”
As a result, I began to invent my own therapies. Each family is on their own as caregivers with their personalized therapies because each profile is different which affects the way you react and care for this person.
Preventing Her Shutdown details my activities and actions "in real time racing against the Alzheimer's clock" to keep her connected with me and her family, even though she is always silent, in my never-ending battle as her 24/7 caregiver husband.
How do I connect with my wife and get her to connect with me? This is always my constant desperation as her caregiver especially because she can't talk. I am always afraid she will stop connecting with me, especially when I get that "blank lost look" in her eyes. Described in this book are the steps taken to avoid losing that connection.
Readers will learn in "Preventing Her Shutdown" intuitive decisions made, different therapies I invent, all "in real time", constantly looking for opportunities to stimulate interaction and connect with her as this alleviates my greatest fear of a "shutdown".
Exposed in this book is my most complicated challenge as her caregiver husband:
How do we communicate?
How do I talk to her?
How does she tell me what she wants or needs?
What therapy can I create to communicate?
Discover in Preventing Her Shutdown how we learned to "connect" with each other and communicate even though she doesn't speak. Readers will learn how she now silently “reaches out on her own'' to connect with me.
Preventing Her Shutdown exposes emotional demands as her caregiver husband. Very personal unloaded emotions are unloaded never confided to anyone as too personal.
“What is she thinking or what her feelings are because now she can't say a word.” I only have some facial expressions or sounds.
“Is she happy? Is she sad”?
“Sometimes I see a sad or lost face.”
“Does she know she is not well”?
“Does she know how she was before”?
“Does she remember her past”?
Then I realized "what about us", our 44 years of marriage, does she remember that past? She recognizes and knows me well but how far back? Did our marriage begin in 1979 or 2017 when she was diagnosed? I am not sure where I was in her memory or how she sees me, as her friend, husband or simply a caregiver.
Discover in Preventing Her Shutdown how her caregiver husband, married 44 years, manages this emotional roller coaster successfully and unsuccessfully, sometimes with tremendous personal emotional impact.
This book is a must-read for anyone dealing with the struggles of caretaking for a loved one with Alzheimer's.
