Five Helpful Purchases for the Alzheimer’s Caregiver

I’m on the other side of caregiving now and am looking back on that experience and wanting to share a few of the most helpful purchases my husband and I made to assist us as we provided care for my mother.

1. Mattress Protection and plenty of bedding – nearly every person who struggles with memory loss will come to the point where incontinence is a fact of life. One of the best purchases I made was this mattress cover. We had a hospital bed, so purchased a Twin XL. This particular cover actually was waterproof and saved our mattress from certain ruin over and over again. It completely covered the mattress — trust me, this is important. I only needed to wipe it down with a disinfectant spray, but it also washed up nicely in the washing machine on warm. I would give it a tumble drying on air-dry with several dry towels romping around in the dryer with it. We had purchased a second-hand hospital bed and it fit that mattress very well. One of the nicest things about this cover was that it was quiet–no plastic crinkling sounds when moving the bed position, or just tossing and turning a bit at night.

2. An Alzheimer’s friendly clock. There are many clocks available for purchase, but I can only begin to tell you how helpful this clock was – especially in the early and middle stages of dementia. We bought two. One for mom’s bedroom and one to keep in the kitchen near her spot at the table. There comes a time in the Alzheimer’s journey where the ability to measure time is lost. You can read my post highlighting the benefits of this clock in my previous post, “When Time Stands Still,” which you can find here. To be honest, now that we’re retired and not marking time with daily routines, hubby and I reference this clock ourselves when we’re having a “what day is it anyway?” moment of our own.

3. These waterproof pads. Yes, disposable ones are nice, especially when your loved one is sick and having bouts of diarrhea. However, these are wonderful for everyday use. I recommend you purchase the largest size so as to cover as much of the bed as possible. More often than not, whatever accident happens will be caught on this pad, which will save you changing all of the sheets and blankets in the wee hours of the morning. These pads will also come in quite handy if your loved one likes to sit in a recliner or other upholstered chair.

4. A wireless security camera. I know there are a lot of camera options out there these days. This D-Link camera did a great job of helping us see mom when she would get up at night – its night vision and ability to pan and tilt remotely was so helpful. This camera helped me in the earlier stages when she was living on her own and I just wanted to check-in and make sure she was okay. In later stages when she needed to live with us, it picked up on her motions at night alerting me to any needs she might have for my help or intervention.

5. And just for fun, we bought this colored pencil set and plenty of adult coloring books. My mom just loved them when she was in the middle stages and earlier part of late-stage dementia. Not only did she enjoy coloring, but she also enjoyed sorting the pencils into color groupings. The zippered case was nice too…it was amazing what all she could squirrel away in there along with her pencils.

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Interesting thing to note: as the disease progressed, Momma gravitated toward using only green and yellow in her coloring. This meant that over time we bought various colored pencils sets to replace the greens and yellows and now have LOTS of colored pencils in every color but green or yellow.