Resources for dementia care volunteers now available online

In January this year, during my blogfest, one work area I identified was: Design a simple and structured way for dementia care volunteers in India to access relevant documents and resources created by me without their needing to contact me..

Over these past few years, while trying to help other caregivers and during my interactions with like-minded volunteers/ caregivers, I have  been preparing various documents and wishlists; I have always shared these openly with anyone who contacted me and seemed interested. These persons could use the ideas and information that helped, and ignore the rest. They could also give me feedback that I could use to improve the documents.

Around December last year, I realized that my existing modality of sharing was not sturdy and effective because it depended on chance contacts and was time-intensive. I must also admit that, being a social recluse, I am intimidated at the very thought of scaling up my availability for person-to-person contact.

I knew the solution would be to share things online, but was unsure how to proceed. My Dementia Care Notes, India website is designed for caregivers, and I did not want to confuse or dilute the caregiver focus of the site. On the other hand, my blog (this blog, where you are reading this entry) carries posts that range widely, including personal experiences, musings as a caregiver, experiences and thoughts as a volunteer, wishlists, announcements, etc. But blogs are, by nature, not so organized, and while each post does have “categories” and “tags” attached, only readers with extreme perseverance/ stubbornness are likely to reach all entries relevant to a topic.

So, I chose a different online home for sharing material with volunteers; I created a special section on my personal website aimed specifically at sharing resources with volunteers working in dementia care in India: Resources for volunteers helping caregivers.

Here’s my intention: whenever I create a document that I think could be of use to other volunteers, I will add it to this section, either in an existing page of the section, or by creating a new page. This could be a wishlist of areas that need work, a document explaining dementia home care in India, or a document with my ideas on how to actually provide a service. Whenever I create a blog entry that is specifically relevant (in my opinion) to volunteers (and is not just a hodgepodge of ideas) I will add a link to the appropriate page in this section. I am leaving comments open for people to add their feedback or other links they find useful.

This section on my website contains my views, opinions, documents. I am not an expert in any way, not even someone with an NGO or a trust or any qualifications as a volunteer. I am just a caregiver who developed a commitment to help other caregivers. I am just someone trying to do whatever I can, and share whatever I think and do, as honestly as I dare to. I undertake no implicit or explicit guarantees that the documents I am sharing are relevant or will help; I am creating this section because I strongly felt I need a space for such document sharing. How others use them is for them to see. Of course, I welcome feedback.

Take, for example, the setting up of support groups for caregivers. We so desperately need such groups. Around the middle of last year, I had drafted a document for creating caregiver support groups for a volunteer body, and then, a few months later, amended that to fit “dementia” caregiver groups for another person keen to set up a group. I know of at least three other persons who have wondered whether they can set up a support group, and what would be involved. There may be many more persons thinking of this. Now, the draft document I have created is available for anyone to read and use as fit, send me feedback, whatever. If someone sends me more ideas, I’ll amend the draft as suitable.

The section is intended for volunteers who want to equip themselves to understand and help dementia caregivers in India, and includes discussions on the status of dementia care in India and the impact of culture and context. Currently, it contains the following pages (this may change).

• Resources for volunteers helping caregivers
  • Introduction: Becoming a well-informed volunteer and selecting where to help
  • The Cultural Context of India and its Impact on Dementia Care
  • Applying available dementia/ caregiving material to the Indian context
  • Available: Explanation of dementia home care in India
  • Available: Dementia Awareness Presentation
  • Available: Draft document on setting up support groups
  • Ideas: Trained attendants and respite care for dementia
  • Ideas: Mobilizing children and youth for dementia
  • Ideas: Improving dementia awareness and sensitivity to caregivers amongst healthcare professionals

Pleave have a look or share the link with anyone who you think may be interested. Thank you!

[And that's one item off my to-do list ]

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Hindi website for dementia caregivers in India (40+ pages): an announcement

This blog entry is to share that I have created a 40+ page Hindi website for caregivers of dementia patients in India. Below, I explain the scope and purpose of the site and put forth my request to all blog readers.

The website:

The site is at http://dementiahindi.com. Topics covered include dementia, caregiving for persons with dementia, related resources available, videos, interviews, and contact information. Everything on the site addresses the caregiver, keeping in mind what a dementia caregiver (as per my understanding) may need to know, or what may help a caregiver. The cultural context is India, and so the examples and the assumptions of system/ social support are based on what is found in India.

The material is written in conversational, normal Hindi (Sanskritized words have been avoided). There are pictures and cartoons, with blurbs in Hindi. As most available online material is in English, many of the referred links to go English sites, but I have also given links to all online Hindi material on dementia/ care that I am aware of (which is pathetically low, and therefore I created this site). The material is a loose (not exact) translation of the English site, Dementia Care Notes, and has a more Indian idiomatic flavour which is possible because it is in Hindi.

The purpose:

As I am not aware of any extensive Hindi site on such a topic, my attempt in creating this site is to break out of the chicken-egg situation of demand-supply related to Hindi sites. People don’t create sites because no one visits them, and people do not look for them because there are none…that is the sort of problem I have tried to step out of.

The http://dementiahindi.com site is created:

• For people who prefer to read in Hindi
• For people who prefer English but need to show family members stuff written in Hindi (they can print the pages/ show them online)
• For volunteers who are too busy to/ unable to support caregivers who need support in Hindi (they can pass the link/ print the pages)
• For volunteers who want to prepare material in Hindi (they can contact me so that we can work out how they can use this material as input)
• For myself, as a starting point for more work I may do in Hindi (like preparing videos)
• To provide an online presence in Hindi that may make a Hindi-speaking caregiver approach me for help, – with the confidence that they can talk to me in Hindi
• For the curious who may surf by and read the site/ use it to reach other online material available in Hindi

Future Plans:

These are not ambitious, and consist of:

• In an on-going way, responding to anyone who contacts me through this site
• Accepting and processing any suggestions/ corrections based on my time and energy levels
• Updating the site for more Hindi material I may prepare (prepared as per my time and energy levels)
• Updating the site to provide links to other material in Hindi that may be available or accessible

My Request to You:

Please spread the word about this site.

I sometimes get emails asking me, “Can I pass on this link to someone I know?” and I’d like to state it clearly that the very purpose of creating such a site is that it should reach people who may be helped by it, so please, please spread the word; you do not need to ask me to pass the link around. There are many people in India who are not all that comfortable with English (though they may not say so), and would prefer material in Hindi if they could get it. Please share this link also with people who may get helped, with people who may know people who may get helped, with people who may know people who may know people who need help…you get the picture.

Social media shares are good. But social media shares last just till the next bunch of tweets and status updates fill up a couple of scroll-downs, so please also consider adding the link to your blog/ site if you think it could help, if you think it fits…

As far as I know, there are no established conventions for how people locate Hindi material on the web. Different people use different ways, and most assume there will be no material. Searches don’t work that well, most people do not use Hindi transliteration on their computers, the Hindi aggregator sites (that were supposed to collate information on Hindi websites) keep going defunct.

So the only way I know to spread the word is “word of mouth” or “word of mouse”. Have a look at the site, and if you think it suitable, please spread the word.

Please help me by giving me any more information you have on online Hindi material on dementia care. I will check it out, and include it as suitable.

Please help me out through feedback on the site, especially any awkward sentences you note, any place where the language is not conversational enough, or there are spelling mistakes. And, of course, other suggestions. I am not an expert, and I have done this alone, and I would appreciate your input.

At the end:

There is, of course, stuff I’d love to share about how I got into this, why, and how I finally got over my diffidence and took the steps needed to create this site, but they are probably worth an entry of their own and that can wait.

For now, let me just end this post by reiterating: The website http://dementiahindi.com is now a complete unit, with 40+ pages, aiming at helping caregivers of dementia patients in India. It is before you. Please consider the site announced. If you have the time and energy, please have a look.

If you see any mistakes, or if you have any suggestions, please, please let me know. The beauty of online work is that it can be changed, improved. Email me at cyber.swapnakishore@gmail.com or use the website’s contact page. I did this alone, but now it is out there, and I am not alone. I welcome comments.

If you think the site could help someone, please help spread the word. Mention it wherever you see fit–social media (Facebook, twitter, whatever), your blog or site. If you think it can help anyone, please use “word of mouth”, “word of mouse”, whatever.

Thank you.

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Reducing caregiver isolation, working from home, using coworking

Recently, I shared my own experience of isolation and loss of social skills as I became more and more home-bound, and then I suggested that caregivers be alert about this possibility and guard against it. A few days later, I happened to talk to a caregiver and she described what she planned to remain connected to people even when she worked from home. I asked her whether I can share her idea, and she not only agreed, she even said that such sharing helps people and she also may pick up ideas if others share their ideas (hint, hint, to any of you who has ideas)

Anyway, so this caregiver looks after a dependent parent who has dementia and is immobile, but can be safely left alone for a few hours. The caregiver works from home, executing freelance assignments that she does on her computer and emails. She was once very active socially and her enforced seclusion dampens her spirit, so here is what she is considering:

This caregiver has an “office room” to work from. Now she will add some tables and chairs to this room to make it suitable for multiple users. She will then invite friends who work from home to use her office room as their offices. Each person will work on her own assignments while sharing the same office space and in the companionable presence of others, so that they all feel like working more and don’t succumb to distractions or feel lonely. The caregiver plans to put out flasks of tea or coffee (for which she may ask her friends to pool money, or maybe not, she hasn’t decided).

Trained attendants and respite care for dementia: Sharing suggestions for volunteers from India

Yesterday, I shared my observations related to availability and quality of trained attendants and respite care for dementia in India (here); today, I am setting down some thoughts on what concerned agencies and volunteers can do right away to make a difference in a way that can scale up fast. I’m no policy expert, but hey, desperate people get wild ideas, and here are mine.

For those trying to help caregivers, the pathetic state of available support is disheartening. Day after day, one is forced to break the sad news to overwhelmed caregivers and I’ve seen many concerned persons getting distressed that they cannot help the way the callers (or email-writers) obviously expect them to do. I’ve felt down myself, both as a caregiver and a volunteer.

Some volunteers begin considering setting up agencies or respite care homes themselves. They redirect energy, time, and resources into trying to set up whatever is needed to train a batch of attendants, or start planning a specialized dementia care home. Often, many of these persons realize midway this is just so much work, and doing this means they cannot do anything else. They feel they are spending all their energy for something that may benefit at most 10 or 20 families, and wonder whether this is more important than what they were doing earlier. Also, being committed to a cause and passionate about it does not naturally equip one to run a full-fledged establishment for fulltime care. These volunteers/ organizations then give up, or start something that fizzles out, having lost valuable time and energy (and sometimes goodwill) along the way.

Here is what I think:

Ideally, there would be this huge nodal body that sets up gazillions of agencies that supply excellent trained attendants at very affordable prices, and also creates heaps of day cares and respite cares so that no dementia patient remains unsupported.

But that does not seem feasible, at least in the short run

We need help now. We need something to start providing relief soon, in a widespread way. We cannot depend solely on the actions of existing dementia care volunteers, already a small and over-stretched community. In addition to increasing the community of persons committed to help, we must get others interested in creating appropriate facilities.

Online caregiver communities: supporting each other

I used to feel lonely as a caregiver till I discovered that there are enough of us, and that there are communities–and even more important: we caregivers can form our own communities. Unfortunately though, caregivers don’t get together often enough, because caregiving is often hidden behind the scenes, even for serious and long-drawn illnesses.

In India, where looking after family members (whether a child or a spouse or a parent) is part of the expected duty, family members typically do not share their problems with “outsiders”, scared that they will be seen as unloving or as persons shirking their duty if they let even a bit of fatigue show. I think silence about caregiving actually worsens the quality of the care we can give our loved ones, because information, tips, and ideas do not get pooled, and care given by a family is restricted to what they can figure out by themselves (possibly in their overwhelmed state). In effect every family is forced to reinvent the wheel.

Contrast this to roles that are talked about openly– like “normal” child-rearing (not bringing up children with special needs, which remains in the shadows). For normal child-rearing, experience pools are easily available and can be accessed without shame.

We need communities and sharing for caregivers, too. Communities where we are able to talk about situations, and hear from others whether they’ve faced similar situations, what could have caused it, what worked, what didn’t work.

Of course, given that caregivers remain invisible, it becomes even more challenging to collect enough caregivers to form a community, and then make members speak up and share

In the “Western” countries as we call them, support groups are relatively common. Caregiving is openly acknowledged as a role, and society accepts that caregivers need support. Such support is partly given by support groups that meet periodically to discuss topics and situations of mutual interest, get expert opinions, and relevant training.

In India, people assume that a “joint family system” provides all necessary support, and feel that outside help is not needed. Some even assume that if a caregiver needs help from outside the family, it indicates the decline of the joint family system, of culture, and all that. The mechanism of supporting caregivers is associated in part with a sense of inadequacy and “bad family” and shame for society as such; if our families were “good”, we would not need support from “outsiders”.

But taking care of a patient using unproven “instinct” is not the same as being an “informed” caregiver who understands the situation and challenges and uses suitable mechanisms and skills to help the patient.

Caregiver communities collectively enable caregivers to become better and more informed caregivers.

Given how difficult it is for caregivers to locate each other and coordinate meetings, in-person communities are difficult to form and sustain. Many caregiver groups that are started with the best of intentions start tapering off unless some volunteer/ caregiver makes it his or her life-mission to constantly induct new caregivers.

Because, you see, a caregiver community is an ever-changing community.

Listening to caregivers, respecting them, supporting them

Years ago, when I was still a newbie caregiver and hadn’t realized (let alone accepted) that I’d be paying a heavy price in terms of my career, a friend/ colleague made the mistake of calling me up and asking me how things were. He vaguely knew of my mother’s issues and my problems of coping, and I therefore (I’ve always been naïve) took his question to be a genuine one, and proceeded with the answer. If a squirm can be seen over a phone line, well, that explains what I perceived, but I was overwhelmed, desperate, and here was a listener…

Or was he?

A few minutes into it, he said, (I paraphrase and abbreviate, but you’ll get the drift) “Yes, well, sorry, hmm, ya, okay, so, must be bad, huh, hmmm, yaa, so, what else is going on? Let’s talk of something hmmm, ya, well, like, well positive…so how’re things…what else…”

Utter fool that I was, I answered, “There is nothing else.” Then it registered on my slow brain that he hadn’t wanted any of this rant. He’d probably expected me to be “positive.” He’d probably just wanted a couple of good, positive sentences from me before he went on to whatever else he had called for.

A full-speed train takes a few minutes to stop after the brakes are applied; I would probably have tapered off in about five sentences but by that time he had managed to sign off the conversation anyway.

I felt bewildered and also let down. I may not have minded had he not asked at all, but asking me and then not listening…

He never called again. I don’t know whether he took a conscious decision about it; it was probably just a discomfort he felt when he thought of me, something that made him choose to make other calls instead. He probably forgot the incident.

This incident happened almost nine years ago. As far as I was concerned, I was not asking him for solutions, or even sympathy. All I did was narrate my situation in response to a question. I may have come around to the point of uttering “positive” statements that society expects, but he shut me out before that.

Overall, this was just one of the early incidents that made me start understanding how isolating caregiving could be. It is through stuff like this that I began to realize that if I talked about the realities of my life, people switched off or decided to avoid me. If I wanted company, I had to pretend my life was very different.

Finally, some clarity about the diagnosis

After our interaction with the second specialist, my mother was understandably quite upset with neurologists in general, and not willing to venture out again.

Our GP, who was also a neighbor and knew us quite well, had no suggestions about what we could try (other than try another specialist). He said the problem was most probably neurological, but did not give a name to it (I think he suspected the diagnosis, but felt it had to be delivered by a specialist).

My mother, meanwhile, tried a round of homeopathy, gave up. She would tell friends about the walking problem, and even if she didn’t, it was visible enough. A family friend brought along a doctor sister, who examined my mother very carefully, and then said she suspected Parkinson’s. This lady was working as a volunteer doctor in a village and she told us that problems like my mother’s were often undiagnosed. She reiterated that people usually labeled such problems as ageing, but these were not ageing, and we would have to take care of her as the problem would get worse. This was a short visit; perhaps she would have said more if we had met her for a longer time.

When the specialist laughed at her

The first specialist we consulted may have shrugged off follow-up visits, but his manner had been so unsympathetic and the information he gave so scanty that we were not sure we’d done enough for the situation. On the other hand, the whole experience had also left all of us–and especially my mother–reluctant to go to another doctor. My mother felt insulted, and probably was shaky inside because she was experiencing more cognition problems than were obvious to us. Now she did not feel she could talk to a doctor…

It took my mother a while to agree to consult another doctor. Her walking problems were alarming by now, and her memory loss quite obvious within the family. We finally narrowed down to a hospital that specialized in neurology, and where every doctor was a superspecialist. Surely my mother would get suitable attention there.

Our first consultation with a specialist

My mother’s initial problems were mainly related to balance, though her memory loss had also started by the time we reached our first neurologist. Her balance and coordination problems (ataxia) were visible, while problems such as memory loss, disorientation, and inability to do things were in a very initial state.

I was only peripherally involved in her health at that time; I did not see myself as someone responsible for her health and helped out when she asked for help. My parents were independent, and would have resented any “interference” and I was engrossed in my life. Most of us do not get involved in parental health unless pulled into it, which often happens only after symptoms have crossed a threshold of alarm.

My mother complained of minor dizziness problems in 1991/ 1992. As she had a medical history of cervical problems, and the dizziness seemed minor and very occasional, she was not too concerned. In 1992,when I’d gone out of town for a trip, my mother drove to Pallika Bhawan, then visited an emporium on Baba Kharagh Singh Marg, where she swayed when climbing one of those arty spiral staircases. She fell, hurt her head. There was plenty of blood. A good Samatarian rushed her to a hospital where they stitched up in her head. She managed to remember the home phone number, and my father was contacted. The doctors did a CT scan which was perfectly normal,and their report mentions no “age-related” anything in it.

On diagnosis, on doctors who may not know or care

One thing that bothers me is this whole business of diagnosis of dementia and how often it gets delayed and how different specialists say different things and confuse us and delay us in getting started in adjusting our lives to this reality…

…and the problem continues even after diagnosis, because when we take the patient to doctors for other ailments, many doctors and medical staff do not understand how having dementia may affect the patient’s ability to communicate problems or explain what happened.

The Dementia India Report 2010′s foreword by Dr. K Jacob Roy states:

It is estimated that over 3.7 million people are affected by dementia in our country in 2010. This is expected to double by 2030. Despite the magnitude, there is gross ignorance, neglect and services are scarce for people with dementia and their families.

Dementia diagnosis is often delayed for multiple reasons.

returning with a brief update, and thoughts on brain bank

So, it’s been three months since my last blog entry. This, after I started the year with a daily entry for one whole month! Ah, well. In software project management, there is a saying: How does a project get to be a year late? One day at a time. That’s what happened here, too.  And after the gap crossed a month, I told myself every day, what difference will one more day make? So it crossed two months, and almost crossed three months.

The last three months have been hectic for me, but dementia and caregiving have continued to form a major part of my life. If anything, the share of my time and energy in these has gone up. It’s just that I could not gather my thoughts enough to make a blog entry.

Let me start with one major event in dementia, the World Alzheimers Day, observed world-wide on September 21. In Bangalore, the functions marking this day were organized by ARDSI Bangalore and Nightingales Medical Trust. There was a memory walk, followed by presentations on dementia and an interactive session with doctors who talked about dementia and answered questions. The chief guest also talked about dementia and policies. And there was a presentation on Brain Bank and its importance in research, and the pledging of the brains of their loved ones by three caregivers.

When families need attendants to help them care for dementia patients (India)

One common problem caregivers face in India is finding nursing attendants who will take care of the dementia patients. Such assistance is needed when the dementia patient is in the middle or later stage and cannot be left alone because the patient may need help with activities of daily living, or is otherwise prone to wandering, and the family members cannot do this kind of care giving full-time.

In India, people employ a untrained maid in the beginning for such help, but once the patient starts getting incontinent or otherwise difficult to handle, we usually get a nursing attendant from a home nursing agency.

The problem is, even ‘trained’  attendants are rarely trained to care for dementia patients. Most attendants have undergone a week or two of training, and while they know about first aid, home nursing and bed sores, they do not know about dementia. So, faced with a dementia patient’s difficult behavior, they take every frustration, every anger, as a personal insult. When the family members say this is a disease, they do not believe it. They get upset and this comes out as either agitation with the patient, or depression, and the situation escalates. Most stints by attendants are short-lived and end with sorrow and bitterness as the attendants cannot cope with the situation.

Based on my experience, and experience of other caregivers I have talked to, here are some suggestions for family members who need attendants to care for dementia patients:

Gather resources: Every city has some resources that can help: To get information on support groups, societies, nursing agencies that can help you understand caregiving better and know where to locate attendants, or equipment and supplies you need to caregive, you can:

medical research, brain banks

A slight diversion from the main theme (dementia and caregiving) that I am exploring–this is about the brain, and how doctors need brains to study and what we can do about this.

We all expect doctors to cure our health problems, or at least treat them and make them bearable. We go to clinics and hospitals hoping that medical professionals will have solutions for problems our bodies throw at us. We expect them to be gods.

How do these gods get their toolkits? How do they know what a set of symptoms means in terms of what our body is doing and why? How do they create drugs and decide on surgery and other interventions to resolve these?

Dementia support groups, dementia caregiving

I have often written about the overwhelm of caregiving, and this post is my expression of gratitude to what has most lightened the burden of it all… my support group.

For many years, I was not aware of any support groups in my city. Last year, after a rather traumatic personal experience, when I realized how very isolated I had become, I knew I needed help. I located a Bangalore-based support group, but I hesitated. Wasn’t a support group just a group of people sharing negative vibes, pulling each other down? Did I have the time to go and listen to a bunch of people, all probably as overwhelmed as me, or more? What possible good would it do? Better to sleep off or read a book or go to a Barista or Cafe Coffee Day and have chocolate icecream

I contacted ARDSI Bangalore, the organization that coordinated the support group. I asked them for any reading material they had. They invited me to visit. The first phone call lasted around an hour, and Dr. Priyamvada (call me Priyam) was so full of practical tips and empathy that my sense of loneliness vanished. She invited me to drop by at her office and discuss my problems further, which I did. The openness with which she and her colleagues listened was a drastic change after years of people not believing me–it was like I had come home.