Archive for November, 2008

For whom to I speak?

Why do I speak up?

Why do I speak to these issues?

What I want/need beyond room, board, good people who care about me, a safe environment, lots of Heinz Ketchup and an extra long bed

Say hello instead of good bye

A sense of wholeness (half full or empty is the wrong view)

The probability for personal growth and development while declining

Activities vs. purpose

A purpose – activities to fulfill it

Personal responsibility for myself

Enabling/disabling and re-abling

Living in today…a dignified, private and proud sense of myself

Visiting yesterday(s) (Reminiscing is over rated and over used)

Truth telling – reality/validation/change the subject/lies/fibs/half truths

The medical model is neither medical nor a model when applied to PWD

Restarting in the middle of the process is gonna cost everyone a fine

Managers who don’t

True stress reduction for caregivers

Living an ambiguous today and an unknown tomorrow

A few words about your cost, my cost, and regulations

Spend a few more cents on advocacy and a few less on marketing

Stand up! Speak Up! Do not become a victim of your own silence.

Speak for yourself and those who will follow. Ask Carers and Friends
to do the same.
Today will never be here again.

Time is of the Essence!! Use it wisely!!

Tell as many people as possible your
perceptions of your interactions with
professionals, with carers, with friends, with strangers, with your government.

They won’t change unless they know, and
they can’t know unless and until you
SPEAK UP!

Seek to create a Palpable Sense of Change and of Urgency!

Join a Crusade, Now!
Be a Crusader, Now!
Lead a Crusade, Now!

“Aim above morality.
Be not simply good,
Be good for something.”
~Henry David Thoreau

In the eyes of many others, sometimes even the eyes of caregivers, I am seen as less than a complete someone. Just because my memory is failing me, just because a region of my brain is failing, just because I don’t always think like you do, nor do I remember as much or how you do, please, please know that in my own eyes, and I hope your eyes,  I am still a whole and complete someone.  I am still me.  I am still grandpa, and dad, a friend, and whole and a complete human being.  I am in my mind still and have always been a complete person.  I am not becoming any less a person simply because I cannot remember like you, talk you do, or think like you do.   I know many of you want me to be who I was yesterday, or last year, or the last time they saw me, but I cannot be, nor do I any longer want to be.  I have ceased looking back over my shoulder at who I was, and now spend most of my time working on who I am , one day at a time.”

Richard