Fresh air

At the Heart of Wisconsin Chamber of  Commerce Mardi Gras Business Expo in February, I signed up to win a Rainmate II.

I didn’t have a lot of time to visit the booths, but at the Water Works table, I was hit with a blast of fresh, scented air. I stopped to talk and filled out the slip to enter the drawing for one of 10 Rainmates.

The Rainmate II is a device that adds a little humidity and your choice of scent to the air. An electric motor circulates the water. It cascades down the sides of the plastic bowl. A bulb inside will turn it into a night light. You add a few drops of essential oil, and voila – fresh air.

The Rainmate II operates in the Hilltop office.

When I learned I won one, I told my co-workers I was bringing it to the office. We can use the fresh air here. Our office is smaller than rooms at my home, too, so it should work well. We also can use it in our sensory room, with supervision.

I haven’t used essential oils, but I know a little bit about them. Different oils have different properties. I went to Family Natural Foods to see what was available. I bought a pre-mixed blend called Peace & Harmony. It has peppermint, patchouli, orange, lavender and basil oils. It has a minty floral herb scent. The bottle lists its benefits: centering, calming, balancing.

We turned the Rainmate on the other day after adding a few drops of oil to the water. My co-worker and I stood over it. We smelled … nothing. We both have colds that have rendered our sinuses pretty much useless. Everyone else who came into the office or down the hall commented on the nice smell. I let it run until the end of the day.

We turn it on for an hour or so here and there. The motor is a little noisy, but I can tune it out. Today, for the first time, I can faintly smell it. My cold must be improving. I’ll be happy when I can fully appreciate our fresh air machine.

Shake, shake, shake, senora!

The activity idea wasn’t mine. A co-worker found it in a magazine.

It was to celebrate Mexico’s Independence Day, Sept. 16. It included the history of the day, a craft idea and a snack idea. Everything revolved around Mexico’s flag colors – red, white and green. My co-worker set everything up, but she had to be out of the office during our regular activity time. So, I took over leading the project, with help from staff members and my son, who volunteers once a week at Hilltop.

We made maracas.

Our maracas have different designs.

They are simple and fun. You decorate paper bags (we used markers and colored pencils in green and red), add rice, beans or anything small and dry that will shake inside the bag, roll the top and add a couple of staples. Shake, shake, shake to your heart’s content.

This bag is styled on the Mexican flag.

I created a a streaming music channel on my phone of Mexican music to accompany us. We made our maracas. The music and maracas made me thing of the Harry Belafonte song, “Jump in the Line,” which I had to look up from the lyrics, “Shake, shake, shake senora.” I found it on YouTube and started it.

I shook maracas. I got residents to shake maracas. I sang. I danced. I got my teenage son to shake a maraca and smile at his goofy mother.

Six minutes later I’m wondering if this song will ever end. Somehow I managed to find a 7-minute, 21-second version. I finally stopped it. I’d had enough shaking.

I don’t know what the residents thought. Maybe that I was silly dancing around and shaking paper bags with rice. The staff members gave me some odd glances. Maybe they were jealous of my great talent at shaking paper bags and acting goofy. I never said I could sing or dance well. If they were job requirements, I’d be out. Fortunately, no one really judges you here.

And sometimes, it’s all fun and games at work – literally.

Watch our video

Making maracas video

Help guide for dementia

Even before I officially joined the Hilltop team, I was invited to be part of the Supportive Community Health Services Roundtable, an initiative of the United Way of Inner Wisconsin. It’s a relatively new group, organized to address unmet needs in the community related to health services. Angela Loucks, chairwoman of the roundtable, suggested it might be a good fit in my new position. As a representative of assisted living, she assumed I could help speak to possible needs we witness.

As it turned out, the group already had a focus when I joined earlier this year: creating a dementia-friendly community.

Some communities in Wisconsin are working toward the same goal. Recently, the Aging & Disability Resource Center-Central Wisconsin has been tasked by the state with taking the lead on creating a dementia-friendly community, so the roundtable might instead focus on creating an age-friendly community, which would overlap in some ways but be broader in scope.

But in the process of discussing dementia needs, Angie noticed she was learning about a number of different resources and wondered if they were compiled in some form for families. She suggested putting together a dementia help guide for families.

The brochure would be styled like the Help Guide for South Wood County, a brochure that provides resources to people who need financial assistance. The Help Guide answers questions about how to apply for unemployment, how to find child care, how to get help with rent or utilities, how to get food or learn new skills to find a job – among many other topics. It’s easy to use and chock full of good information.

So, what would we put in a dementia help guide? Caregivers at our Alzheimer’s support group suggested where to get cheaper medical supplies, how to handle taking away a driver’s license, transportation options and respite care. Angie wants to include information about the support group, our memory cafes (there are two!), ADRC services, Park Place Adult Day Services and memory care facilities.

She also plans to include a card to cut out, like this one.

It’s something a person can give to a server at a restaurant or a store clerk, for example. The back features community resource information.

What would you include in a dementia guide in our community? What resources exist that we should highlight? What questions do you have that the guide could answer? You may call Angie at 715-421-0390 or post a comment here, and I’ll pass it along to her. Thank you, in advance, for your assistance.

Baby therapy

We had a young visitor at Hilltop. She’s got blue eyes and dark hair – what there is of it. She’s beautiful, and she brings out the best in all of the residents.

She’s the 3-month-old daughter of a co-worker. She came dressed in a pink, summery outfit, bright-eyed and wiggly. She easily won over the hearts of everyone – staff members, residents and family members of residents.

“I hear there’s a baby here,” said the wife of one of our residents as she came into the office. She wanted a turn to hold her, too.

We all did. We cooed and touched and oohed over her. We let her grasp our fingers in her tiny hands, and we held her tiny feet in our big hands.

We couldn’t get enough of her.

She’s a very pretty baby.

But it was more than just that. There is something about children and babies that appeal to us. It’s a rare person who isn’t intrigued by little ones. Our residents love it when staff or family members bring in their children or grandchildren. It might be their size or the energy they exude. It might be the memories stirred of their own children.

Even the next day, one of the residents at the Estate was gushing about the baby who came to visit, about how beautiful she was and how special it was to see and hold her.

While the residents in our memory care facility might not remember her visit, the joy they experienced in the moment is priceless.

That’s why we said we need baby therapy at least once a month. While our residents enjoy it when pets visit, they really love it when a baby visits. I guess the only trouble is babies grow up. But we’ll treasure their visits as long as we can. 

Virtual dementia tour

I put on dark glasses that blocked my vision. I put in ear buds that chanted gibberish and wailing sirens. I put on too-big gloves, one inside out. I put plastic inserts in my shoes that poked me constantly.

Then I went into a darkened room with a strobe light flashing and attempted to complete several tasks, spoken to me quietly in quick order.

Uh, what?

I fumbled around, remembering the tasks, but not able to complete them all because I couldn’t find what I was looking for. Where were the towels?

I have the advantage of a good memory and the ability to block out noise and pain – at least temporarily.

But for people with dementia, this distorted reality might be too real.

Stoney River Memory Care in Marshfield provided the session for members of the Wood County Coalition Against Abuse Interdisciplinary Team recently. The purpose of the I-Team is to increase awareness surrounding the topic of abuse and neglect of elders and adults at risk in Wood County, to coordinate efforts of various agencies that respond to abuse and neglect and to facilitate the development of better resources and preventative efforts. We meet quarterly to learn and share. We have different guest speakers and topics each time.

The virtual dementia tour is meant to simulate what a person with dementia might be experiencing. The shoe inserts mimic foot pain or chronic pain, and they make you more unsteady. The glasses distort and darken vision as might be the case with eye problems in elderly people. They also alter your “normal” reality. The gloves make you fumble more – you’re less sure of your grip and have trouble with fine motor skills. The ear buds that provide constant noise distract from the task at hand. They make it hard to hear instructions, just as hearing loss can make it hard to hear people’s voices.

We were timed as we did our tasks, although our results weren’t revealed. I think the timing was meant to encourage us to keep going and wrap up our tour – not that anyone would want to stay longer than necessary.

We knew we were only in that situation for a short time. We were doing it willingly.

People with dementia don’t have that luxury.

The women who offered the tour said they encourage family members to take the tour to get an idea of what it’s like for their loved ones with dementia. They said people sometimes break down, realizing how difficult it would be to live like that.

The tour should help caregivers – both family and professional – understand the importance of speaking slowly and clearly, making eye contact, only giving one task or suggestion at a time, showing what you want accomplished and taking into account pain and confusion.

The virtual dementia tour gave me a better understanding for what it might be like to live with dementia and a greater appreciation for caregivers. If you get the chance, I strongly encourage you to take a tour.

Other duties as assigned

Everyone jokes about "other duties as assigned" on their job description. Usually it’s meant to cover the minutia  of a job that can’t be easily captured in broad statements.

I’ve learned in my new job that it means a whole lot more.

Even though I have an office job doing community relations, research and project work, I do a lot more. That’s the nature of assisted living. We move furniture, we clean and fix things, we plant shrubs and flowers (and water them when it doesn’t rain), we paint walls and stain wood. We joke about other duties as assigned.

Recently, I was assigned to remove a wallpaper border from a resident’s room and then put up a new one. I finally picked a day to dress down and tackle the project.

It came off pretty easily. I was able to peel back the top covering, spritz it with water and scrape off the backing. Soon I was ready to put up the new border. I held it up to see how it would look. The walls are painted three colors: taupe on the bottom, cream where the border had been, about eye level and little above, and a pale lavender above to the ceiling. I held up the pine cone border over the cream. It looked nice, but I wanted to be sure. So I called in a co-worker. She agreed it looked nice. She even held it up so I could stand back and look. Yup, we thought it would go nicely with the colors and theme of the room.

I’ve taken down a lot of wallpaper in my life. Layers of it, sometimes, over rough plaster walls. It tests your will. After all, if you start to remove the paper, you are committed. It’s not a job you can leave half done.

But I’ve never put up wallpaper. Neither my husband nor I particularly like it. (See note above about removing the nasty stuff.) So, when it came time to put it up, I asked a co-worker if she thought I should use the water method alone or the border adhesive we had in storage. She said she’d only ever done it with water. I knew I’d have to paste on the adhesive, and you still need to book it, so I thought using water would be easier.

She said she’d help when I got to the long stretches when it would take two people to handle the job.

I measured and cut my first piece, wet it in the sink, booked it for the required two minutes and put it up with a wet sponge. It went up pretty easy. I worked my way around the room, doing the smaller sections, leaving the two lengths for the end.

I opened my last package and started to measure the long pieces. I dithered over where to cut it for the seam on one end. I measured for my final piece so I’d have everything ready to go when my co-worker got back to help.

There wasn’t enough. I was almost 3 feet too short. Grr. I didn’t think we had any more in storage. What to do?  I could seam the long wall and maybe repaint the short one so it’s one color without the cream border. I couldn’t come up with other solutions. Try to match it? I did find a match online, so maybe that’s an option.

My co-worker came back, and I shared my dilemma. She said she’d check to see if we happened to have more in storage. “Let’s leave it until Monday,” she said. I agreed.

A few minutes later she came back in the office as I sat looking at wallpaper borders online.

At about the same time realization was dawning on me she asked, “Is it upside down?”

Rats. I made a face. It was. At least according to the pictures online. The straight edge should go at the top – as if you were placing it against the ceiling as a border. I’d turned it around. I thought it looked like a shelf with pinecones resting on it.

She started to laugh. I apologized. She thought it was funny. “Now you have a story to tell your family when you go home tonight,” she said.

“Yeah, that I’m an idiot,” I said.

Everyone who stopped to see what I was working on during the afternoon probably thought I was clueless, too. They told me it looked nice. Maybe they were just being nice. Poor girl, they thought. She doesn’t even know how to hang wallpaper.

Oh well. I still think it looks nice this way. But it is an excuse to take it all down and find enough of a border to cover all the walls.

That would be another duty as assigned.

The things they bring me

Two residents stopped in the office. One was holding two small, clear bowls, stacked, with four large tortilla chips in the top bowl.

The resident holding the bowls set them on my desk and proceeded to take out the chips, telling me about a business deal in southern Wisconsin that wasn’t working out. He explained how I needed to fix it or fire the guy. The chips were the product, which he wasn’t happy about.

As he headed for the door, I asked if he wanted to take the chips with him. No, he said. His companion looked at the chips hungrily but didn’t reach for them either.

So, they sat on my desk for a while.

A little later, the first resident returned and left me a pizza crust as well. He had snacked on his leftovers from lunch out with a family member or friend. I guess I was the depository for leftover food that day.

I cleaned up the leftovers and took the dishes to the kitchen. It’s just one of the things they bring.

People with dementia act in different ways. Some tend to walk a lot. Some ask the same questions over and over. Some forget where their rooms are and go into other residents’ rooms. Some forget that items belong to them.

We have several residents who tend to pick up items and move them around. We find odd things in odd places. Some of those misplaced items wind up in the office where we collect them until we figure out where they go. Staff members usually can identify someone in a photo to get it back to the right owner. We recall who collects knickknacks or who has outdoor decorations in their room. Eventually, items are returned. We know some things will move again, but that’s OK.

Some things go missing. Clothing, slippers, TV remotes. Glasses, dentures, hearing aids. Those are little more troublesome. Sometimes they turn up in the wash – literally. One day we found someone’s dentures in the box for newspapers. Those waited on my desk until someone could figure out their owner.

It’s always interesting what they bring. Arm-chair covers. Books and magazines. Lamp shades. Baskets. Flowers. Cups. Bowls.

And, apparently, tortilla chips, too.

Surprises in assisted living

I started my new job in January. After more than 20 years in the newspaper business, I made the switch to health care. I’m the community relations director for Hilltop Affiliates Inc., a group of assisted living facilities in Wisconsin Rapids.

I pretty much knew what I was getting into. I knew what my boss expected of me – what challenges I’d face, what my role would be. Like any new job, there was a learning curve. Still is, as a matter of fact. I’m learning all the time. Part of my job is to research projects and information for our business, so I spend a lot of time on the computer, reading everything I can and watching the occasional video about more topics than I thought possible.

I enjoy my new job, very much. It’s better hours, less stress, a LOT fewer emails. I can choose which project I’ll work on at any given time. I usually have several things going at once, so I can switch back and forth as information is discovered or the mood strikes.

I’ve learned so many ins and outs, it’s amazing to me. I know more about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia than I thought possible – and yet I’m certainly not an expert. I am fascinated by the brain, though, and I read every story about every study that comes out. 

There have been some unexpected things about this job, too. 

The biggest surprise was how much I’d get to know our residents. I share an office at our main building. Unless the vacuum is running or someone is in a private meeting, the door is open and the residents, family members and guests go by and sometimes come in. I see them in the halls and sitting areas. I say good morning at breakfast and goodbye when I’m leaving. I get to know them during activities and when they need some attention.

I enjoy their smiles and greetings. I know they don’t remember my name, but I call them by name, usually each time I see them. Names are sort of a touchstone, although no one has told me that. But it’s a way for them to remember who they are when other names – Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa – no longer have the same meaning.

I also didn’t realize how much I’d sing. I never had to sing at the paper – except the very rare party when we planned to make fools of ourselves. Now I’ve been singing so much I could join a choir. I’m not a singer. I can carry a tune. I can harmonize. I’ll sing in a crowd or at church. But I don’t think I have a nice singing voice. My voice is unusual, and I think it’s a little disconcerting when I sing. But the residents don’t seem to care. They love their sing-alongs, and I’ve been pulled into leading them a little more often lately. They usually are old-time songs. Some are new to me, but old hat for our residents. Others I remember from elementary music class. It’s surprising how the words to something like “America the Beautiful” will stick with you. 

I’m not surprised how much I enjoy my new job, though. In this blog, I’d like to share some insights into my job and our industry. Assisted living isn’t well understood until you’re in it. Dementia is a vague illness until it threatens your family. So, come along on this journey with me. You might be surprised at what you learn.