Respite Protocol For An Alzheimer’s Victim

(Yes – The Caregiver is ALSO a Victim!)

The Vital Importance of Respite Protocol

People providing Respite for the Alzheimer’s Caregivers are often at a loss as to what to do. So, here is the answer…

A Relief Caregiver’s highest Protocol
is to avoid disrupting the systems now in place.

This section is structured to offer common sense solutions to guide someone who is providing relief for Alzheimer’s patient Caregivers. It is not structured to provide any type of hands on training. Your best bet for that is to learn directly from the Primary Caregiver.

The relief Caregiver providing assistance to an Alzheimer’s patient must be cognizant of the fact they are not at all providing any type of service if they in any fashion disrupt whatever systems or mood the Primary Caregiver has already established. If the Relief disrupts the existing status quo, that Relief Caregiver has initiated perhaps even long term damage to both the Primary Caregiver as well as the Alzheimer’s Victim.

Over a period of time, every human in existence engineers an acceptable framework of understanding, i.e. routine. They develop what’s called a ‘comfort zone’. I remind you that an Alzheimer patient who has progressed beyond the introductory stages of the disease doesn’t have the cognitive ability to re-establish or even minimally revise their comfort zone. Such a task is almost always mentally and emotionally beyond them. Worse, it’s quite likely they no longer even retain the ability to conform to whatever changes they begin experiencing. Because an Alzheimer’s patient doesn’t any longer have the ability to envision, comprehend or smoothly conform, the only thing that any significant change manifests is their own uncertainty. Their own anguish. Change, particularly an abrupt or an expansive modification in their routine, can easily be interpreted (internalized) as a bad thing. Something to be frightened about. By changing the ‘system’ in place, the Relief Caregiver could well be causing more trouble than help.

As a consequence of experiencing that frightening or ‘bad thing’, the returning Caregiver’s ability to continue to provide a peaceful or harmonious existence is jeopardized. How long will it take that Primary Caregiver to restore the known workable routine wherein the Alzheimer’s patient once again begins to receive the best of health, safety and uplifting Emotional Content?

Friend, when you are kind enough to give some type of respite to the Primary Caregiver, you must be extremely careful not to disrupt the routine already established. Unless in the latter stages when pretty much all comprehension is gone anyway, the Alzheimer’s patient is used to and both mentally and emotionally comfortable with the existing routine. So much so that even the mere ‘intrusion’ by another Caregiver might bring forth some degree of mental and emotional trauma that they may likely have difficulty managing. It doesn’t make any difference if you, as a Relief Caregiver are a son or daughter. You are a ‘new’ person in their life… and that may well be unsettling, even quite scary to them. Also integral to this change, by the way, is the fear of abandonment. It is not at all uncommon for the Alzheimer’s Victim to wonder why they are being abandoned by their Primary ‘friend’. A second not so uncommon fear is wondering if they are about to die because their friend, sometimes their only friend, has left them.

The importance of resolving to retain the existing routine cannot be over stated. The Alzheimer’s patient’s realization of a change in Caregivers will doubtlessly prompt a degree of uncertainty. But if coupled with other newly introduced changes, regardless of how slight, then it might be that by the time the Primary Caregiver returns… everything …will have become out of whack. Those other ‘slight’ changes, by the way, might even include minor differences as in feeding or bed times, a difference in store visits… or not; communication or not; and even a difference in your choice of television or radio programming.

Though the Relief Caregiver might leave with a self identified feeling of bliss for their well doing, and certainly their service properly compels good wishes, really though, if both the Primary Caregiver as well as the Victim are then undergoing unnecessary mental and emotional trials because the Relief Caregiver proved he or she ‘could care less’ about maintaining the established routine… what’s the point? Is the health, safety and positive emotional state for the Alzheimer’s victim, who is likely your own loved one, the better for your being there? Or, have you opened a can of worms and then walked away into bliss?

The bottom line, friend, is if you are going to provide positive relief for the Primary Caregiver, like it or not you must conform to the wishes of that Caregiver as well as whatever systems are already established. You have to trust the likelihood that they exist because they’ve been proven to work.

Next, you might like to view…

‘How Many Caregivers Are Required For An Alzheimer’s Patient‘