June is Dementia Care Professionals month. Taking care of a dementia patient is a hard, but important job. While stress and burnout are high, we hope anyone taking care of a dementia patient takes moments to take care of themselves. The Chatham Area Public Library has resources to help these caregivers, highlighted here are just a few.
The Chatham Area Public Library received a grant from the Rotary Club of Springfield-Chatham and put together these wonderful kits of resources. These kits have items both to take care of the caregiver and to provide some activities to do with the dementia patient. You can search in our online catalog or on our website for “caring for the caregiver” to see all the available kits. An example kit is the Companion Cat kit. This kit contains the books “The 36-Hour Day” by Nancy L. Mace, “Creating Moments of Joy along the Alzheimer’s Journey” by Jolene Brackey, “Affirmations for Family Caregivers” by Harriet Hodgson, and “Weeds in Nana’s Garden by Kathryn Harrison. These books are to help and encourage the caregiver. There is also the book “Everyday Fashions of the Fifties as Pictured in the Sears Catalogs” edited by Joanne Olian. This book might help the patient to reminisce and talk about some fun or memorable moments in their past. Similarly, this kit contains a DVD “The Art of Caregiving” to be a support to the caregiver, and also “America’s Treasures” and “Sitting Tai Chi” DVDs for the patient and caregiver to view together. This Companion Cat kit also contains a stuffed toy cat (that purrs) for the patient to set on their lap and pet. This and the 5 other Caring for the Caregiver-Dementia kits can be checked out for 6 weeks, so there’s time to explore all the goodies in the kits. Besides these kits, the Library has many other books to help caregivers of dementia patients.
For some fiction books with dementia as a prominent topic, but with plenty of heart, try these. The Day We Met by Rowan Coleman is the story of Claire, a woman who’s got it all, a gorgeous husband, two beautiful children, and a job she loves. But recently she’s been losing her memory, including that of the day she met her husband. This story tells of her passions, sorrows, joys, and her adventures in a life that refuses to surrender to a fate worse than death: disappearing. The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth tells of a man and woman, both with early onset Alzheimer’s, who meet at a living facility and, despite the disease’s struggles, fall in love. The Skeleton Box by Bryan Gruley is less of a tear jerker than the previous titles. Mysterious break-ins during the weekly bingo night has the elderly residents of the small town, Starvation Lake, unnerved. What’s even more mysterious is that the intruder never takes anything. Suddenly, these Bingo Night Burglaries escalate when someone is murdered. The woman whose house the body was found in, suffers from dementia and under the influence of sleeping pills, remembers little of the break-in.
These books, along with many more can be checked out from the Chatham Area Public Library. Visit the Library’s website at www.chathamlib.org to find out more about these books.