Woman With Dementia Found Alive After Being Lost
A 75-year old woman was found after 2 days missing. She was found in a drainage ditch after crews searched 53 hours and covered 1,500 acres. It’s great news to hear that she survived, but it must have been a harrowing ordeal. This is a scary reality when living with or caring for someone who suffers from Dementia.
While this story happened in North Carolina, I have personally heard similar stories of a loved one found wandering after getting out of the house. The task of removing independence is such a heavy burden for loved ones to endure. It exists because there is a true loss of cognitive decision making when dementia progresses past certain states. Please remember, to consult the agencies and services available to you if you are diagnosed with dementia or if a loved one is. There may be things you can do in your home, or simply by alerting emergency responders so that a community can help to ensure the longest time possible where one can live with a sense of independence.
5 Things Parents Can Do to Prepare Their Kids for School Year Round
There are some good things in this article from WFAA Channel 8 in Texas. Things like implementing a schedule, asking more open ended questions about their days, and truly listening to the replies represent some of the 5 tips mentioned.
Many people do this already, but I think the key part to this is actually being interested and involved in your kid’s day to day activities. One doesn’t have to guide them per se, but listen for opportunities to support productive and engaging learning. Every child is different, but I can say that my kids respond well to structure and scheduling - they seem to love to know what is happening next, and to predict what is happening next (i.e., today is ice cream day at day care…they know that after the weekend, they start out with Ice Cream Day). When we talk about that at dinner, it sparks conversations about other things they did and the mischief they all get into…but we get to experience a little more about what they like each and every day and then we get to think about ways to feed some of the things we learn about.
Scam Watch: The Big Business of Fraud
Here’s a blog post of the top frauds of 2018 that was posted by Paul Witt, a Supervisory Data Analyst with the Federal Trade Commission. They did a comprehensive analysis of 1.4 million fraud reports with 25% of those reports being reported as frauds where the victim lost money.
People reported losing $1.48 billion which was an INCREASE of 38% over 2017. If you thought fraud was isolated, thing again. It is BIG BUSINESS, and we all have to be vigilant. It impacts all people from all walks of life and often leads to heartbreak and significant trauma. Of note, younger people reported losing money to fraud more often than older people!
Read this report for some insight into the scope of fraud in our country and remember that one of the best ways to fight fraud, is by reporting it, and sharing it when you experience it. The more we get the word out, the less likely someone is to fall for the scam.
The Nun Study
How important is Community to preserving brain health? Perhaps you have never heard of the nun study, but here’s a report from CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta revisiting the Nun Study (University of Minnesota study of the nuns of Sisters School of Notre Dame in Mankato, Minnesota.).
It’s an 8 minute video highlighting how over 600 of the nuns who have come through the school who donated their brains to study dementia and Alzheimer’s. In earlier videos that are available online, the study points to ways that community helps keep the brain functioning / healthier. They also show ways that idea density and vocabulary could be predictive of Alzheimer’s or dementia later in life. Researchers also like this sampling of people because the population has so many similarities in environment and belief systems.
