Know where you are coming from – EXERCISE

First, you need to be realistic with your individual situations and circumstances because you cannot change history, you can only deal with it.  Take sometime to yourself and sit quietly.  Than ask yourself these seemly simple questions.  Or so they seem until you try to answer them.

1. What is your relationship with this person? (Spouse, partner, child, parent, sibling, grandchild, friend, acquaintance, volunteer, co-work…)
2. How would you describe your relationship with this person? (steady, sounds, unstable, volatile, loving, enabling, controlling…)
3. Who are the significant people in their life you will have to deal with? (family, friends, neighbors, work…)
4. How could these people affect your relationship with the person?
5. How well do you know this person’s history and current status? (health, family, friends, work, interests, achievements, finances, medications, legal matters…)
6. What needs does the person have today?
7. What do you project their needs to be in the future?
8. What role do you see yourself playing in their life in the near future?  And later on?
9. What are your needs from this relationship? 
10. Are there things you feel you cannot or are not willing to provide to this person?
11. How much time are you willing to put into this relationship?
12. Are you willing to support this relationship on a financial basis?  If so, to what extent?
13. What is the most important thing to you about your relationship with this person?

Once you have had sometime to ask yourself these questions you will find more questions arise, and that is perfect.  The new questions will help you design you plan for the future.  Now, if there is one thing Alzheimer’s disease has gotten through my thick scull, it is that things change.  Nothing is permanent, no matter how much care or how much thought you have put into something.   So I want to make sure you don’t feel things have to be set in stone before you can move forward.  Nothing is further from the truth with Alzheimer’s disease.

I have posed these questions to you, so you might avoid some basic adjustments right off the bat.  If the person you are dealing with is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, these are great concept questions to have them answer as well, but you might have to tweak them to be pertinent for them.  Just break them down into simple verbiage so they do not get overwhelmed.