Neurological illness and bilateral activities

When faced with neurological illness, it is important to understand that there are some activities that can delay symptoms and help maintain functioning longer.  Any activity that utilizes bilateral body movement can help delay deterioration.  Playing cards, turning pages of a book, crocheting and handwork, and peeling vegetables are just a few simple activities that involve bilateral movement.  Often as we age, we begin to acquire gadgets and gizmos that seem to make life much easier.  However, in reality, performing some of these small tasks actually helps our brain function and works out the brain, so to speak, so that the two hemispheres of the brain communicate better.  Hand tools in the kitchen (such as vegetable peelers), reading the actual paper or a real book, or even the old fashion rolling of a skein of yarn, are crucial to maintaining brain function.

It is also important to incorporate gross motor bilateral movement.  Stretching the arms across the body, kicking the feet across (even if sitting down), bouncing a balloon in the air, and manipulating objects so that your loved one has to reach across the body to pick them up are all great tactics for involving gross motor bilateral movement.  Marching in place and climbing stairs are also great activities for this important brain maintenance.  These are great exercises for your loved one with neurological illness, but also for you to do with them for your own health.

Love for the Caregiver

In addition to the challenges I face daily as a family caregiver of disabled children, it has also been the misfortune of my children and I to be preyed upon by some of the worst types of human being that walk the earth.  I tell you this because I want you, dear reader, to know that we have witnessed the worst of the worst.  Knowing this side of life, I am forever thankful to God for putting me in the caregiving profession.  It is through my job with +Comforcare Home Care of Austin that God has allowed me to also witness the best of humanity.  I have a kind and good man, Jeff Henderson, as a boss.  He truly has a heart for the people in the personal care business, employees and clients.  I have seen the beautiful interaction between spouses as one cares for the ill spouse.  Ladies, I am in no way trying to underscore your valiance and faithfulness, but I want to take a moment to give some respect to those male caregivers.  God has put these men into my path so that I can know that good men exist.  He has allowed me to see the best of them.  Since I have been a caregiver professionally, I have seen a couple married 10 years and she had Alzheimer's for 7 of those 10 years.  He still came faithfully every day to sit with his wife and care for her.  In fact, I have seen that scenario more than once.  It is a beautiful thing as a woman to know that there are men out there that fall in love with and cherish a woman in her senior years, instead of replicating a dysfunctional pattern portrayed through the media of men only chasing after young women in their child bearing years.  To see a man at his wife's side during illness and you assume they have been married most of their lives, then find out they have been married 10 years or less, gives pause to the depth of the human soul.  Then to also see a loving husband who devotes his life to his wife, in love and gratitude for the woman she is to him, blesses my heart in the sweetest way possible.  I want to speak specifically today to the husbands caring for a wife with dementia, some days she may not remember your name and you may feel sad, but rest assured that a woman will always know her sweetheart in the depths of her spirit.  She has a recognition in her heart of that one special guy who took the time to cherish her, endure with her, study her, and devote himself to her.  Whether or not she remembers your name today is not what is important.  What matters is that you are an imprint on her heart and a comfort to her spirit.  Be blessed my dear friends and I thank you for giving me the privilege of a glimpse into your love story.