We also have a few ladies who really enjoy making crafts, no matter how big or small.  We’ve found that one of the crafting activities that seems to work well for a variety of independence levels is crunching up little squares of colored tissue paper and pasting them to an object or a drawing.

To get an activity like this ready all you really need are some sheets of colored tissue paper and scissors, or actually, I prefer using one of those long blades with a grid base (I forget what to call it) so you can cut up one inch squares quicker.  We put these flat squares of tissue paper into small cups, like old margarine containers, and put them around the table for our members to choose from.  They can then scrunch the paper into whatever shape they’d like and then dip it in some glue to paste it to their shape.  Also, for those who have trouble with individually dipping each piece, you can spread glue onto the shape first and then scrunch the paper up and drop them on.

To take the activity one step further for your more independent crowd, ask them to help prepare the activity.  They can help cut, sort, or even help scrunch some shapes up for those who cannot due to arthritis or paralysis.  They can also give you input as to what colors to choose and can help supervise and assist less independent residents.

After our group made their patriotic stars, we hung them up on our bookshelf to decorate the room.  They really enjoy being able to look up and see their contribution to the program, I think it adds to their self-esteem quite a bit.  Today we sent them home with them as they left so they could enjoy it for the 4th of July holiday.

One lady in particular was very concerned about not forgetting her craft this afternoon.  She asked us to take it down from the bookshelf so she could keep her eye on it.  Memory is a fascinating thing, this lady remembers her short-term memory is poor, so she tries to compensate for it!

As you may imagine, once we pull one craft down, other members wanted to hold onto theirs as well, and before you knew it we only had three stars hanging and a bunch of them on the table!  People began to be picked up and the lady who started the whole episode went to the restroom before she expected her son to arrive.

When she came back, her star was missing!  She was so worried to not forget it and now we couldn’t find it!  We feared someone took it home accidentally, but I was pretty certain that couldn’t be the case.  I asked her to check her pockets but she said they were empty.  She wore a big, baggy jacket, one that was probably three or four sizes to large for her short frame.

We looked around and tried to see if she thought if one of the stars hanging was hers, but she could tell it wasn’t; she knew her own handiwork.  My heart ached for her, of all the things she would forget during the day, she couldn’t forget about not taking this craft home.

I asked her again to check her pocket, because I was sure it had to be somewhere on her, but they were empty.  Luckily, something caught my eye on the bottom of her jacket and I asked her to hold still for a minute.   I leaned over and saw a piece of gold string around a button on the bottom of her jacket.  I pulled it, and the star appeared out from under her jacket, thankfully!

The mind is a mysterious thing, she knew she didn’t want to forget it, yet couldn’t remember she tied it to her coat.

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During our mornings, we hold our Sit and Be Fit exercise activity around 11am, just before lunch.  As we began, I noticed a very small puddle underneath Dr. Singer’s wheelchair.  I wasn’t quite sure how it got there, was it from him, or did someone spill a little water?  I decided to go over and whisper in his ear that I could escort him to the restroom if he needed to use it.  He quietly obliged and nodded his head towards the door, not wanting to make a big scene.

I walk him through the door and about twenty feet to the nearest restroom.  He can walk short distances, so I locked his chair and helped him stand up.  I then held the restroom door open and told him I’d wait outside.  He’s always very jovial, and started to sing to himself as he walked inside.  As the door closed, I turned around and couldn’t believe what I saw in the hall.

All the way from the activity room down to where I was standing I saw a trail of tiny puddles.  I knew I had about five minutes before Dr. Singer would be finished in the restroom, so I tried to bend toward the ground to see if it was indeed what I suspected it was.  It was a pretty clear liquid, but I was almost certain it was urine.  Oh boy, I thought, I’m going to have to help him change his outfit when he’s finished!

I patiently waited by the restroom door for him to walk out, trying to plan in my head the best way to ask him to change.  As he opened the door, I immediately tried inspecting the front of his pants.  I couldn’t believe it, they were as dry as the desert!  I asked him, “Do your clothes feel wet, at all?”  He said, “Nooo, everything’s fine!”  I checked the back of his pants, and down to his shoes, but everything was dry.

I decided to wheel him back to the activity room, over the trail of tiny puddles.  What was going on?  As he seemed fine, I quickly got a mop to sanitize the floor and tried to figure it all out.  There were puddles everywhere, more than I noticed before!  How could he have gotten the floor all wet and be completely dry?

And then I remembered.  Dr. Singer was a very well-dressed man.  He probably spent more on his wardrobe than I could afford for mine.  Now, there aren’t very many breakthroughs in men’s business clothes, but I vaguely remembered a commercial where a man poured a cup of coffee into his kahkis and then from his khakis back into his cup.  When the coffee returned, the pants were dry.  They were treated with some sort of chemical that resisted liquids.

And there I had my answer.  Dr. Singer didn’t have magical mystery pants, they were just the latest and greatest.  Nice pants.

-Justin Zarb ADPC

Image by Robert S. Donovan

One of our sweeter ladies, Mrs. Hair Lady is very sociable although her hearing is not the best.  And by not the best, I mean that one time I popped a balloon by accident when we were taking down some decorations and she told me that was the first thing she heard all day.

Well, Mrs. Hair Lady begun this habit of bringing photos in from her family album so she could better share with everyone about her life.  The first couple times she brought in pictures of her daughters’ pets and then she shared pictures of her grandchildren.  A few weeks after that she brought in some photos of herself in her 30’s and 40’s (she was quite a head-turner!) where she looked as young as her teenage daughter.

She sat down at our morning table and asked for a hot tea.  When my co-worker brought it back Mrs. Hair Lady started looking through her purse for something.  Quite honestly, I was trying to be attentive to something else, but out of the corner of my eye I saw her finally pull out some photos.

I assumed these were her usual family photos and didn’t pay much attention to them.  Mrs. Hair Lady showed them to my co-worker whose face soon turned to a bewildered horror.  Mrs. Hair Lady said, “That was from my 62nd birthday.”  She pulled out a third photo and I reached my neck out so I could take a glimpse of it before she handed it over to my co-worker.

It looked like a person was dancing, except their clothes were all nude colored.  Wait, maybe the person was nude?  I tried to move and get a better look at these three pictures.  I got another glimpse from my co-worker and noticed a very thin line around the dancing person’s waist.  Stymied, I couldn’t figure out if this person was a man or a woman.

My co-worker started to blush a little and I asked to see what all the fuss was about.  She turned over the three photos to me and I saw Mrs. Hair Lady sitting in a chair, receiving the up-close-and-personal nude dancing of a man with very long hair (this must’ve been from the 70’s)!  Ah, the small string around his body, he was wearing a thong!  And wait, on the last picture, the thong was gone and there was a dark colored box where the man’s manhood should be.  By the way, it was a very big box.

I tried to put these photos back in her purse, but by now the others at our program had their curiosity peaked.  Of course, Mrs. Hair Lady couldn’t hear me, and I didn’t want to say too much because everyone else was oblivious to the content of the photos, but she insisted on sharing them with the group.

I said to my co-worker, “I’m not sure if this is a good idea to pass around,” rather loudly so everyone could hear.  Almost as if on cue, Mrs. Hair Lady said, “Yeah, he was a stripper!” so loud that everyone burst out with a comic gasp.

“I want to see, I want to see,” said one of the other members.  And Mrs. Hair Lady wanted to make sure she saw.  What was I to do?  She got the pictures passed around to about half the group.  Most of them were laughing, some were too shocked to learn their friend was getting a very intimate performance from this man with long straight hair.

“My family got it for me for my 62nd birthday,” she said.  “I was embaressed.  Everyone wanted to come down and see him dance for me.  Although, none of the children could come down.  They all wanted to know what was going on!”

As a staff, we started to rationalize the incident.  They’re all adults we said, there’s nothing in these photos they haven’t seen.  To be honest, I’m still cracking a smile over this many hours later.  Why would Mrs. Hair Lady bring these in at all?!!!  What was the motivation???

I always tell my co-workers, there’s never a boring day where we work.  That was never more true than this morning.

At her facility, they have a resident to believes that he is Jesus Christ.  One day, another person who was admitted to the facility also began claiming that he was Jesus Christ.  Fearful of the outcome if Jesus ever met Jesus, they made sure their two rooms were in far apart units.

Now, I have to interject, when someone with dementia tells you that he is Jesus Christ, you should probably refrain from using ‘reality-orientation’ techniques.  I’d hate to see him try and prove it to you if you tell him he’s not.  He could try to walk on water or cast a demon out of you, all I know is that it is something to avoid!

Anyway, one day both of the Jesus’s happend to be wandering all the way to a common area in the center of the facility.  As fate would have it, the two Jesus’s met each other and it was too late for the staff to intervene.

The two men sat down to talk.  The first explained that he was indeed Jesus Christ.  The other man then said that he was indeed Jesus Christ.  The two of them started to discuss and they came to this conclusion:

They decided they couldn’t both be Jesus Christ.  So, they decided that neither one of them would be Jesus.

Whew!  Talk about dodging a bullet!

But, it goes to show you, that even someone with dementia can still make sense out of some things.  They are not just ‘plain crazy.’

So I told her she looked sleepy, but sitting next to me was another member, let’s call him Dr. Singer, and he said, “You know, if you come visit me in my office, we could diagnose the problem and help you to not be so sleepy.”  Of course, Dr. Singer no longer practices, but often he talks as if he’s still in the prime of his career.  Somtimes he can be a little rude about diagnosing people (”You may have sephilus.”), but today he was very respectable, like an earnest physician that I hope he once was.

“You see, we can do the blood work, and find out what is making you sleepy.  There may be some obesity in the blood.”  I love hearing him talk because he has a  Count Dracula type accent.

Ms. Montana was a little astonished.  “Are you saying I’m fat?!!”

“Well, if it is the obesity in the blood, we can put you on a program and help you lose the weight so you feel much better.”  Dr. Singer replied gently and encouragingly.  “You know, you can lose the weight!”

“But I’m not fat!  I don’t care if I am fat!”

Dr. Singer really encouraged her, without any hint of rudeness, “It’s okay, you can lose it!”

“Well, what if I don’t mind if I”m fat?” Ms. Montana asked.

“Do you know how much you weigh?”

“I don’t know how much I weigh?”

“You don’t know!  You never get a check up?”  Of course, even if Ms. Montana did get a check up, she couldn’t remember what they told her anyway.

“Well, I probably weigh 125 pounds.”

“Ohhhhh!  No, you must weight at least one seventy five, maybe one hundred eighty pounds.”

“No way, you’re outta your mind, Dr.” Ms. Montana replied with an excited tone.

“Well,” said Dr. Singer, “we can go back in that room and you can show me with your skin how much you weigh.”

At this point I couldn’t let this go on any longer!  I told the good Dr. that this was not a clinic and that since other people are in the room, we cannot go on with a diagnosis due to privacy violations.  He agreed and said that he was dropping the issue with her.

A few moments later, though, Ms. Montana wouldn’t let it go.  “So you think I’m fat, Dr.?”

“Oy, I told you I’m not talking about it anymore.  The nice director here (me) says we cannot continue with our appointment.”

“Well even if I am fat, all I care is that I’m happy and healthy.  I don’t care if I’m fat.”

I held my breath at this point, hoping the good Dr. would play nice all the way to the end, but it was inevitable.  Ms. Montana had left the door wide open for a disparaging remark.

“You don’t care if you’re fat, it shows.”

Oy vey!  I’m thankful that’s the end of this conversation.  Although I was super impressed our Dr. was so polite and encouraging through his conversation.

I was playing a dice game with five of our members and every so often one of them will rub the dice on the back of her head for good luck before she rolls.  She rubbed the dice on the back of her head every turn this afternoon, and the lady sitting next to her, let’s just call her “Ms. Smiley,” wanted to try it out too.  Her next turn she rubbed the dice on her head but alas, no luck.  The next time it became her turn Ms. Smiley took the dice to her head again, but there was no luck on that roll either.  So the next time around, and believe me, I was totally unprepared for this, she takes the dice and rubs them on her chest!  And by golly she rolled the biggest roll of the day!

The other men and women with us were chuckling and a little stunned as Ms. Smiley turned bright red and couldn’t keep herself from laughing.  I’m not sure, but my face might’ve turned a shade pinker as well.  When the dice came around to the lady who usually rubs them on her head (I guess we’ll call her Mrs. Hair Lady) she took the dice and rubbed them on her chest as well!  This sent Ms. Smiley into a riot of laughter and Mrs. Hair Lady rolled the dice with no luck.  I asked the group, “What is going on here?  Did they put something in the water at lunch?” and Ms. Smiley tried to cover up her inappropriate behavior by saying quite solemnly as she pointed to her shirt, “I have good luck because I rubbed it on my heart…It’s the heart, you see.”  I’ll have you know that Ms. Smiley is probably the worst liar in our entire facility.

Just then my co-worker came by, I stopped her to tell her things were going hay-wire.  “What’s wrong?” she said.  Ms. Smiley said, “Oh, we’re just rubbing the dice on our hearts for good luck.”  I turned to my co-worker with wide open eyes, “That’s not all they’re doing,” I said.  Mrs. Hair Lady jumped in and said, “Watch.”  She demonstrated their new technique and my co-worker’s jaw dropped halfway to the floor.  “Ahhh, no luck for me.  I guess you really need bigger ones to make it work.”

I thought I’d seen or heard it all, but today’s the last day I’ll be thinking that.