First, protect yourself. If you try to help your loved one on your own, you could seriously injure yourself and the whole situation will snowball.

If you must help by yourself, there are techniques such as a gait belt—a strong canvas belt designed specifically for assisting with ambulation. If your loved one starts to fall and you are close enough, you can grab the belt and help lower them to the floor, breaking the hardness of the fall. However, this technique only works if you are able to do so without injuring yourself. You can purchase a gait belt through a durable medical equipment company or get one through the home care agency you are working with.

If you can’t get your loved one up and have no one close enough to help, call 911. Most emergency response teams have been trained in dealing with the issues of Alzheimer’s disease, and understand situations like wandering, falling, and choking. They are more than willing to come to your home and assist you. They can also assess your loved one for injury and transport them to the hospital if necessary. Many caretakers have who have been desperate for help call 911, and they report being treated with the utmost care and respect; do not hesitate to call.

Medical alert devices worn on the wrist or around the neck can also assist in calling for help; you push the button and soon, help arrives. These systems are sold through several different companies and can be researched on the internet.

While every person with Alzheimer’s disease goes through the disease differently, it is more than likely that your loved one is going to walk, wander, or pace. Caregivers must allow this behavior by structuring their loved one’s environment to be as safe as possible. People with Alzheimer’s have perception difficulties; black sections of carpet may look like a “black hole” that should be stepped over, or a shiny tile floor may appear wet. Good lighting with minimal glare will reduce these kinds of misperceptions and reduce anxiety.

Minimize clutter around the home. Items like footstools, baskets on the floor, floor plants, or papers and magazines lying around will increase confusion and can be unsafe. Remove these obstacles.

There are many products that can help caregivers increase security for their loved one and decrease their own anxiety. Bells, alarms, and locks on the doors can aid caregivers in keeping track of the person with dementia. Baby monitors are also good for monitoring, especially during the night. If your loved one has trouble with falling out of bed, put their mattress on the floor and put an extra mattress on the floor beside them to help prevent injury.

Information on purchasing home safety devices can be found at www.alzstore.com, other home safety devices can be found at radio shack, and baby monitors can be found at most stores that carry baby products.

Typically, those who are around someone with depression tend to notice it much more than the person suffering. If you begin to notice that your loved one is sleeping a lot, has lost interest in activities they once enjoyed, exhibiting a change in eating habits or weight (loss or gain), or being in an overall “down” mood, you may be seeing signs of depression. Comments like “I’m no good anymore,” “I don’t want to do anything,” or “I wish I were dead” should be taken seriously and attended to. If you detect symptoms of depression in your loved one, it is crucial that you have them examined by a physician. Even if the physician has already diagnosed your loved one with dementia, they should still assess your loved one for depression, because depression can accompany dementia.

Antidepressant can help to alleviate the symptoms in a few weeks. Other interventions are good nutrition, good amounts of sleep (not too much and not too little), and exercise.

Though pain itself does not cause dementia to worsen, pain can cause increased confusion, agitation, and depression in your loved one. The possibility of pain needs continuing assessment.

The issue of pain can be a difficult one to deal with in caring for a person with dementia. Often, a person with dementia will find that they are unable to express pain they are feeling or the needs they have, and as a result will begin to act out in other ways, such as wandering, agitation, grimacing, sleeping, or simply shutting down. If your loved one begins exhibiting a sudden change in behavior like increased confusion, it is possible that something is causing discomfort or pain—it could be anything from shoes that are too tight to an infection.

In regard to treatment for your loved one, the simple answer is that “pain is pain,” whether Alzheimer’s is involved or not. When working with cancer patients, for example, the goal is to eliminate pain as much as possible and to keep the patient as comfortable as possible. It should be no different with individuals with Alzheimer’s. No matter what the stage of their disease, your loved one should be as pain-free and comfortable as possible. A UTI (urinary tract infection) can cause pain; symptoms include inflammation, burning, and itching. Since treatment for this condition is not invasive and will ease the discomfort, treatment will definitely increase your loved one’s quality of life.

If a person with Alzheimer’s has a history of arthritis or other painful illness, continued treatment according to doctor’s orders is advisable to aid in the prevention of pain. Other types of pain such as headache, backache, sore throat or foot pain will also need individual assessment and treatment.

The bottom line is that as a caregiver, your goal should be to keep your loved one as comfortable as you can. This means not only treating pain as it comes up, but knowing what to look for. Pain can cause a person to become depressed, and a good indicator of pain in your loved one may be a sudden decrease in interest in things they usually enjoy; however this can also be a symptom of non-pain-related depression, so those issues may become a guessing game, and seeking a doctor’s advice will be beneficial.

This is a very tough situation; both for your mother and for your family. A family meeting with the oncologist concerning the cancer would help to ensure that all of you are on the same page. In a meeting like this, the doctor can answer any specific questions you have regarding the cancer, prognosis, and treatment options. It is more than likely that the doctor will recommend that you not be too aggressive or invasive with treatment; any type of operation or aggressive treatment will cause increased confusion for your mother. If surgery becomes a necessity, be sure you understand the risks involved.

Your doctor can also order hospice services. Hospice not only assists families dealing with a loved one with cancer, but also patients in the late stages of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Hospice is a wonderful organization that provides support, education, and care for loved ones and families of loved ones going through these difficult diseases. The goal of hospice is to keep your loved one out of the hospital and in her own home; to keep her comfortable and pain free, and to have the best quality of life possible.

This topic has been debated quite a bit, and the general consensus is that it really depends on the person. You know your loved one better than anyone; if you think he or she can handle it, then the answer is probably yes. You have to think about how it will affect them and whether telling them is of any benefit. It may also be useful to consider how he or she has handled stressful situations in the past.

If the person who has died is someone your loved one saw every day and will be missed, it may be beneficial to inform your loved one. The difficult part of this is that due to the short term memory loss, your loved one will more than likely forget and keep asking you about the person. At that time you will have to decide again whether to keep retelling the new or to use “therapeutic fibs.” Therapeutic fibs are ways to protect the person with dementia by responding to their questions without upsetting them unnecessarily. You can try telling your loved one about the deceased person and see how it goes, but if he or she continues to ask, you can say that the person isn’t here right now. You can say he or she isn’t here, and you’re not sure where they are, but you know that they are okay and in a safe place.

Whether or not to tell them about a death also depends on the stage of your loved one’s disease. In the early to middle stages of dementia, you may feel obligated to tell your loved one about a death, whereas in the later stages, telling probably wouldn’t be beneficial. No matter what the stage, if the deceased person was not around your loved one on a regular basis, telling your loved one may not be beneficial.

The same issue arises if your loved one asks about their parents. Often, your loved one’s parents have been gone for many years, but because the person is drawing on long-term memory, he or she is thinking about them again. The best way to handle this is through validation; you can say, “I know your parents aren’t here now and you miss them, but they are okay and they know where you are.” Then the two of you can reminisce.