Speaker 1: We have the stark, cold reality of the existence of
Speaker 1: the nefarious disease. It is Alzheimer's disease. I'm happy to
Speaker 1: welcome to the thirty five Caresey Morning, So Lisa's Skinner,
Speaker 1: a behavioral health are expert in the field of Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: and related Dimentia's twenty year career as a community councilor
Speaker 1: and regional director of a senior care facilities, She's helped
Speaker 1: thousands of families find the best care options for their
Speaker 1: loved ones, holds an administrator's license through the California Department of
Speaker 1: Social Services, and has written a book Were Talking About Today.
Speaker 1: Truth Lies in Alzheimer's, Its secret faces. Lisa, it's a
Speaker 1: pleasure to have you on the program.
Speaker 2: Oh, good morning. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it
Speaker 2: very much.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to my personal experience with Alzheimer's. My father
Speaker 1: passed away a couple of years ago as a consequence
Speaker 1: of Alzheimer's, and we had to live with and cope
Speaker 1: with the decline, the gradual and then accelerating decline of
Speaker 1: his memory and his ability to take care of himself,
Speaker 1: and ultimately had to be in a full time care
Speaker 1: facility because the caretakers has simply become exhausted and props
Speaker 1: and so much love to my mom and how hard
Speaker 1: she worked to try to keep up with them. But
Speaker 1: it's such a tragic, tragic disease, so I have a
Speaker 1: connection with it. But I'm kind of curious to know
Speaker 1: how you got involved in treating folks with Alzheimer's and
Speaker 1: what prompted you to write the book.
Speaker 2: Well similar experience to yours. I've actually had eight of
Speaker 2: my own family members live with one of the brain
Speaker 2: diseases that caused dementia. And my very first experience was
Speaker 2: about fifty years ago with my grandmother. I went over
Speaker 2: to her house. She worked very close to me, I
Speaker 2: grew up with her, and I thought it was just
Speaker 2: going to be a normal conversation. We sat down and
Speaker 2: she started telling me about these birds that were living
Speaker 2: in her mattress and they would come out at night
Speaker 2: and peck her face. And then she pointed to her
Speaker 2: walls and asking, you see those rats running all over
Speaker 2: the place. They're invading my home. And then finally she
Speaker 2: told me that there were these men who were constantly
Speaker 2: breaking into her home. They were stealing her personal possessions,
Speaker 2: her jewelry, and she was convinced that they were going
Speaker 2: to do away with her and take over her life.
Speaker 2: So what I was witnessing, I mean, I was a teenager,
Speaker 2: unbeknownst to me, was a delusion, yeah, or a false
Speaker 2: belief with the birds living in her mattress, a hallucination
Speaker 2: with the rats running all over the house. And another
Speaker 2: common symptom that we see with dimension and Alzheimer's disease
Speaker 2: is paranoia and suspiciousness. And I had no idea that
Speaker 2: there was even anything wrong with my grandmother. This was
Speaker 2: the first time that I saw any signs of anything unusual.
Speaker 2: And I asked my mother, you know, I just had
Speaker 2: the most bizarre visit with Grandma, but it seems like
Speaker 2: there's something wrong with her. And she says, yeah, she's
Speaker 2: been diagnosed with what they call back then, senile dementia.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, why didn't you tell me? I mean,
Speaker 2: I was completely caught off guard. I didn't know what
Speaker 2: to do. I didn't know what to say. He says,
Speaker 2: we don't talk about this, and that was really the
Speaker 2: mindset back then when it came to, you know, brain diseases,
Speaker 2: and because people really thought it was a mental health
Speaker 2: issue back then. So anyway, I ended up going to
Speaker 2: getting my degree in college and I went My degree
Speaker 2: was in human behavior, and I was absolutely fascinated by it.
Speaker 2: So I had an opportunity to take this position in
Speaker 2: an elder care facility called a community counselor, and basically
Speaker 2: it was helping families. I would do all the assessments
Speaker 2: and explain to them what the advantages were of senior
Speaker 2: living and memory care and assisted living. And I just
Speaker 2: ended up working my way up to this regional director
Speaker 2: position and I ended up managing five buildings and training
Speaker 2: all the staff, and I received a lot of training
Speaker 2: myself on better practices and what a new ideology that
Speaker 2: was basically becoming popular called a person centered approach to
Speaker 2: care versus the therapy that was being used for people
Speaker 2: living with dementia at the time, which was called reality
Speaker 2: orientation therapy. And what that meant was if a person
Speaker 2: living with dementia was having a false belief, if they
Speaker 2: were confused about the time of day, or the day
Speaker 2: of the week, or anything else, we were expected to
Speaker 2: correct them and kind of steer them back into our reality,
Speaker 2: which was what was current true. And we just found
Speaker 2: through decades of that practice that it didn't work because,
Speaker 2: as you probably realized with your own personal experience, once
Speaker 2: a person living with dementia is locked onto a belief,
Speaker 2: there is absolutely nothing anybody can say or do to
Speaker 2: change that belief until they've kind of, you know, change
Speaker 2: it themselves.
Speaker 1: And right, so you got to kind of you have
Speaker 1: to kind of roll with it.
Speaker 2: Then you do. That's exactly That's exactly what you know.
Speaker 2: Years and years and years of trying to effectively communicate
Speaker 2: with somebody with cognitive decline, with brain disease, we found
Speaker 2: out that it was just really exacerbating anxiety and anger
Speaker 2: and frustration and you know, really led to catastrophic reactions
Speaker 2: and meltdowns. So I was trained on this new approach
Speaker 2: to dementia communication, and you know, in the earliest phase
Speaker 2: of it, and I saw firsthand the difference it made
Speaker 2: in the lives of everybody involved, the family members, the caregivers,
Speaker 2: the people living with dementia, and really became an expert
Speaker 2: in it, and I started teaching it and bringing it
Speaker 2: to people's attention and teaching people how to approach these
Speaker 2: situations like I had with my grandmother. Okay, how do
Speaker 2: you respond with somebody all of a sudden, that of
Speaker 2: nowhere starts telling you that birds are living in their mattress,
Speaker 2: coming out at night and pecking at your face. You
Speaker 2: don't argue with them and try to say you're crazy,
Speaker 2: that couldn't even possibly happen. You join them where they're.
Speaker 1: At, like what kind of birds? What color are they?
Speaker 1: They're just kind of again rolling with it and just
Speaker 1: acknowledging what they think and not resisting them on the cap,
Speaker 1: which brings about that frustration you're talking about.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what was discovered to be true. And so
Speaker 2: this is basically what led me to write the book,
Speaker 2: was to raise awareness about what living with Alzheimer's disease
Speaker 2: was truly like for the people who have it, the
Speaker 2: family members, the caregivers, And because I discovered in my
Speaker 2: career helping families that probably the biggest piece that was
Speaker 2: missing to this whole entire puzzle was people's lack of
Speaker 2: understanding of what these diseases are doing to the brain
Speaker 2: and the symptoms that show up and the behaviors that
Speaker 2: show up. And once people understand that and then are
Speaker 2: properly guide on how to effectively respond, then the whole
Speaker 2: entire experience and journey for everybody involved can be so
Speaker 2: much less stressful, and they can focus on what really matters. Yeah,
Speaker 2: quality time with their loved one, at least.
Speaker 1: The Skinner, author of the book we're talking about today two,
Speaker 1: thrives on Alzheimer's at Secret Faces, which provides you with
Speaker 1: all this information that you know I'm thinking about. You
Speaker 1: were focusing on the frustration and the anxiety that the Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: the struggle the person struggling with Alzheimer's gets when you
Speaker 1: resist what their perception of reality is. But that in turn,
Speaker 1: their resistance to that also agitates the person trying to
Speaker 1: tell them that no, they're not birds in the bed.
Speaker 1: So you both get on this downhill slope and nobody
Speaker 1: benefits from that. I can see the point you're making
Speaker 1: on this. You can't cure the Alzheimer's. This person is
Speaker 1: going to carry those beliefs. There's no pill that they
Speaker 1: can take to make it go away. There's no point
Speaker 1: in arguing with them about it, right, I mean, isn't
Speaker 1: that kind of what it boils down to?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're spot on, absolutely spot on on that. You
Speaker 2: You couldn't have said that oral, realistic truth. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: you've experienced it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I resisted, you know, I was, you know,
Speaker 1: like he wouldn't remember my mom's face or who she was.
Speaker 1: And I was like, why don't we get the wedding
Speaker 1: pictures out and look, you know you here's your here's
Speaker 1: when you got married. And and I remember my sister
Speaker 1: telling me, Brian know that that's not going to work.
Speaker 1: That's pointless. And it sounded so cold. It seemed like
Speaker 1: such a simple solution, and it's not. You learn that
Speaker 1: over time having lived through it. So I'm glad you
Speaker 1: wrote the book and provide people with this and maybe
Speaker 1: take the weight off their shoulders that they don't need
Speaker 1: to run around and argue with this person struggling and
Speaker 1: it's not worth the time effort, and it makes everybody
Speaker 1: worse off. I just appreciate that perspective. Now before we
Speaker 1: part company at Lisa Skinner, I we all have what
Speaker 1: we call senior moments. How can people distinguish between normal
Speaker 1: aging forgetfulness? Because coming up on age sixty this September,
Speaker 1: you know, I do have my days and mild versus
Speaker 1: mild cognitive IMPAIRMENTI and dementia. There are there telltale signs
Speaker 1: that we can like be a red flag to people.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yes, and what you just described happens to all
Speaker 2: of us probably starting around when we put our phone down,
Speaker 2: we can't remember where it is you find our car keys,
Speaker 2: we walk into a room and I would remember why
Speaker 2: we were Yeah.
Speaker 1: You made me feel better, very very normal.
Speaker 2: But to that point it starts freaking people out because
Speaker 2: the first thing they think of is, oh, is this
Speaker 2: the first sign that I'm going to get Alzheimer's dizzy?
Speaker 1: Right, especially when your dad passed away from it and
Speaker 1: your mom's mother passed away from it too, So it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: got me completely freaked out.
Speaker 2: It's like, uh oh, and it is there were one
Speaker 2: fear that people have believe it or not starting about
Speaker 2: the age of fifty five, and you can can't blame them.
Speaker 2: So the best way to kind of described in a nutshell,
Speaker 2: because we don't have a whole lot of time to
Speaker 2: really go into no, no, just brief speaking to which
Speaker 2: you're out of time in the segment.
Speaker 1: Conclude your thought leaside because we need to get this information.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the frequency and the severity of the memory
Speaker 2: loss is really key. So if it's just happening once
Speaker 2: in a while, then that can pretty much be considered
Speaker 2: normal age forgetfulness. If it starts to happen more often,
Speaker 2: more frequently, and more severely, then it's probably moved into
Speaker 2: more uh, you know, a more obvious stage of miild
Speaker 2: cognitive impairment. Okay. What really separates between those and full
Speaker 2: blown dementia is if the underlying cause is truly a
Speaker 2: brain disease like Alzheimer's causing the memory deficits. Okay, and
Speaker 2: most people aren't even diagnosed till they're in their mid
Speaker 2: stages because that is when the symptoms become so obvious, okay,
Speaker 2: that you need to go get a professional assessment. I yeah, starting.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you writing the book to provide this information
Speaker 1: because there's so much of this floating around out in
Speaker 1: the world. It seems like it's becoming a more and
Speaker 1: more common phenomenon. The truth lies in Alzheimer's its secret faces.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your time this morning with my listeners,
Speaker 1: and thanks again for writing the book. Lisa. I appreciate
Speaker 1: the work that you're doing.