When my father first showed signs of memory loss, I looked to professionals for answers and cures. Years after his death, I look less for answers and cures, and more for ways to make sense of dementia. Maybe this is why I’m drawn more to books about personal experiences right now.
Gary Joseph Leblanc’s book Staying Afloat in a Sea of Forgetfulness: Common Sense Caregiving Expanded Edition
is one of those books. Based on his newspaper column “Common Sense Caregiving,” the book is Gary’s way of making sense of dementia and caregiving after more than a decade of caring for his father.
A book dealer by trade, Gary surely loves a dramatic story. That’s not what this book is, though. Each brief, easy-to-read chapter offers common-sense solutions to problems caregivers may face. He deals with everything from sleep disturbances to incontinence to embarrassing behavior in a straightforward (perhaps even manly!) way.
The ideas in Staying Afloat in a Sea of Forgetfulness are often creative. When he needed to keep track of his father at night, Gary bought a baby monitoring system. The system did its job a bit too well, and the sound of his father’s snoring was overwhelming. Gary installed stuffed parrots with motion detectors instead, and their squawking alerted him when his father left his room during the night.
Best of all, this book can help you feel better about being a caregiver. “Caregivers will forever panic about whether the job they’re doing is adequate….” Gary writes. Lose the guilt, establish a routine, and then just go with the flow, he advises. “It will be well worth it in the long run.”
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