caregiving
Smurfs Log: The latest entry to the list of famous female illusionists and magicians has been added...
* I am so proud of my mom. It only took her 24 days to find her way out without anybody noticing 😇
Luckily her former neighbor was on her way to visit mom and stumbled on her two blocks of her former house ❤️
#Alzheimers #Caregiving #Dementia #Opsec #CyberPlace #Smurf #WhiteHat
Smurfs Log: Buttons
* Part of the "Housecleaning (Things Left in My Mom's House)" series
Mom moved out of her house about four months ago. I have been spending a few hours every week organising things. Today I began the final leg of this journey: sorting her sewing room.
Throughout her life, she collected thousands of buttons of all shapes and colours. I'm finding it very difficult to decide what to do with this treasure trove…
Smurfs Log: Me and my Dad
* I've been posting a lot about Mom recently. My dad passed away 33 years ago. He was the one who used to take the pictures around the house. While sorting my mom's house, I found this old picture of me and my dad 🥰
One of the "Things Left in My Mom's House..."
Five Good Books about Mental Illness. As a parent and caregiver for an adult living with a serious psychiatric illness, I have read a lot about the subject. Here are my five favorite books about psychiatric illness.
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1996) by Kay Redfield Jamison, PhD. The best memoir about living with a serious mental illness and the best book overall that I have read about mental illness, in this case bipolar disorder. Fine literature written by a brilliant author who earned a PhD in psychology and has been awarded about a dozen honorary doctorates. It is inspirational.
The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America’s Mentally Ill (1995) by Gerald Grob, PhD. The author was a medical historian who wrote this balanced and objective book about the history of psychiatry. It includes the good and the bad. Despite the unfortunate title, this is a great non-fiction book about the history of psychiatry in the USA.
We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication (2010) by Judith Warner. This book, written by a journalist, was originally intended to be a critique of psychiatry and the parents of children with mental illnesses. But as the author met families and did her research, she changed her mind and wrote a balanced book about parents trying to help their children. As the author points out, we parents are not eager to put our children on psychiatric medications; in fact the opposite is true.
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of An American Family (2020) by Robert Kolker. This biography was written by a journalist about the lives of a large family with twelve children, six of whom were eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. It is intense and disturbing, as is living with schizophrenia. It is not an encouraging or feel-good book.
Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are (2018) by Kevin Mitchell, PhD. This book by a neuroscientist is more broadly about neuroscience, rather than specifically about mental illness. But the author addresses serious mental illness and the state of our knowledge about possible underlying causes of it as a developmental disorder. This book focuses on modern scientific evidence, rather than assumptions and the blame game often associated with attitudes about mental illnesses.
#Books #Bookstodon #MentalIllness #MentalHealth #Psychiatry #Caregiving #Disability #Schizophrenia #Neuroscience
Smurfs Log: Holding hands
* I usually post my weekly photo later in the week. However, I'm not sure if my mom will still be with us. She has a strong heart and isn't ready to let go yet…
2026/20 #Hände
Got a bit behind on my Small Moments posts. Yesterday was a hard day. They had to bring dad to the ER from the rehab facility as he’d had quite a sundowning episode. Turned out he has Flu A and pneumonia in the lower left lobe. No real symptoms, no abnormal temp, nothing.
Infections like this are known to make dementia sundowning episodes a lot worse. He’s on IV antibiotics and we are hoping to get a geriatric team consult to help navigate his journey in dementia. This is so hard.
#Caregiving #Dementia #AgingParents #MentalHealth #SmallMoments
aging mother –
pelicans
return to the river
#DailyHaikuPrompt | pilgrimmage
#SmallPoems
#Caregiving
Ladies and gentleman, meet the pro-dementia party. If Congress passes #Trump's big, hideous bill, 96% of #Alzheimer's research projects would have to be rejected.
If you know someone with #dementia, if you love someone with #Alzheimer's, call your Congresspeople and tell them you have enough cognitive reserve to remember how they vote.
I've got a nerd #AskFedi question, expectations are high since we are on the Fediverse 😘
Situation: I’ve tagged mothers keys with bluetooth trackers. I hate this stuff, but she’s suffering from dementia and I also need some sleep. I'm using android trackers, e.g. the Google Find Hub. I hate this too.
#Caregiving #Alzheimers #Dementia
Question: How can I improve the bloody “home tracking abilities” of these #%#@! trackers on Google Find network?
#Bluetooth #Android #RaspberryPi #FediHelp
🧵1/2
Smurfs Log: Day (unknown)
Talking about recent events is very helpful for me. Likes and boosts have really meant a lot to me in recent hours, days, and weeks… ❤️
Today, for example, my dear mother had one of those days.
She snuck out of the house an hour after I arrived while I used the restroom this morning...
Mental note to myself: Be prepared. Poop at home before rushing over there… 💩
Smurfs Log: Pretty Vacant
Part of the 'Housecleaning (Things Left in My Mum's House)' series.
* The photoseries depicting my mother's house is drawing to a close. Over the past 7 months, I’ve sorted through everything and documented all the important items. The house is now almost empty...
New post: Grieving the Version of Me Everyone Thought I Was
https://lanie.work/advocacy/grieving-the-version-of-me/
#Disability #Autism #Blindness #Chronic-Illness #Long-Term-Care #Caregiving #Advocacy