INSIDE ALZHEIMER'S:
How to Hear and Honor Connections
with a Person Who has Dementia
Paperback
by Nancy Pearce
A very important addition to the body of work for the caregiver of people with dementia!
In this book, author Nancy Pearce shows us how we can communicate with people affected by dementia in any of its forms. Whether you are a professional visiting caregiver, on staff at a facility caring for people with dementia, or are caring for a loved one at home, Inside Alzheimer's is a must read.
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Inside Alzheimer's
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Quantity in Basket:
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Code: 5001
Price: $14.96
Shipping Weight: 1.00 pounds
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There is a person inside Alzheimer's and any of the other dementias – a person, just like the rest of us. We each need to be heard, seen, valued and appreciated by another human being – to experience the intangible gifts of humor, wisdom and understanding found in the person-to-person connection. The disease, no matter how progressed, does not alter the enjoyment and satisfaction that comes from being in vital relationship with others, but the person's opportunity for connection lessens, most often because we presume it is too difficult or impossible.
Creating opportunities for connection with persons with dementia is basic compassionate and transformational care. How to do just that is the core teaching of this book. When we can hear and appreciate the person's wisdom, see a gesture that weaves us into his world, or enjoy a moment of mutual spontaneous emotion, we both move beyond isolation and hopelessness. Each of us grows in relationship with the other.
This book offers over 20 years of the author's experience and a practicum by way of dozens of examples and anecdotes. The storytelling places the reader in the rich interactions with persons with dementia that helped bring the author back to the basics of how one person connects with another. We can create connections in the moment and get beyond the barriers by practicing these six basic principles taught by religious and spiritual traditions throughout time:
- Intend a connection
- Free yourself of judgment
- Love
- Open to being loved
- Silence
- Thankfulness
Internalizing these principles has helped hundreds of caring family members, friends and professionals bridge the gap between their known and comfortable worlds and the sometimes daunting, uncharted territory of time spent with a person with dementia.
We highly recommend this book for caregivers of anyone with Alzheimer's disease or any other dementia that effects communication. If you think that you have lost the person that you knew, this book has the power to change your mind and the insight to help you find that person again.
Inside Alzheimer's is appropriate for caregivers of people in all stages, and for people in the early stages.
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Written by medical social worker Nancy Pearce, Inside Alzheimer's: How to Hear and Honor Connections With A Person Who Has Dementia is an uplifting guide for anyone whose friends or loved ones suffer from various stages of dementia. Relationship and connection with patients who are afflicted with dementia are still possible and highly beneficial; Inside Alzheimer's covers the six basic principles of forming a dynamic: freeing oneself from judgment, love, openness to receive love, silence, and thankfulness. One reviewer said of the book, "I would much rather err on the side of assuming that the person with dementia can participate in his decisions about end-of-life care, rather than assuming he can't. It happens more than one would expect that during an open discussion, the person with dementia pops into a particular moment of clarity and clearly provides input." Highly recommended as guideline, aid, comfort, and inspiration.
˜Susan Bethany, Midwest Book Review magazine's "Reviewer's Bookwatch
As dementia including Alzheimer's progresses it causes one to lose access to memories, and as memories fade the person, more and more, exists in the present. It is in the present that you will successfully relate. Once you learn to be with this person in his or her sphere, which is the here and now, much of the frustration that is so common in caregivers of people with dementia will melt away. Inside Alzheimer's will help you to do just that.
Ms. Pearce has more than 20 years of experience with geriatric patients and people with dementia. Those years have obviously given her tools to connect with people who many have given up on; but more obviously, she brings to her profession an intuitive understanding of the process. The importance of her intuition comes through clearly as she talks to us about the people she has touched and who have touched her.
