Communicating with someone who has Alzheimer's

Here is another helpful article on communicating with someone who has Alzheimer's disease or another dementia
Originally posted: July 28, 2008
by Judy Graham
There is no manual for learning how to communicate with someone who has Alzheimer’s disease.

You watch. You listen. You try to intuit what they can no longer say. You use everything you know about that person to make sense of their reality.

I know, because my father had Alzheimer’s disease and several other relatives have suffered from dementia. At the end, my father couldn’t put a sentence together. But still, the last time we hugged, he managed to say, "I love you."

I think I knew then the end was coming, in that way you know things without knowing how.

I think I knew then the end was coming, in that way you know things without knowing how.

I was living in New York City at the time; he was in Chicago. Back then, I thought it was the close of a stage of our relationship. But my next trip to Chicago, the city of my childhood, was for his funeral.

Peter Stathakis, 59, is living with the situation now, caring for his 84-year-old mother 24/7 at her house in Brookfield. He describes her as in the "mild to medium" stage of dementia.

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