Common Assisted Living Retirement Home Questions 3 | Who lives at your community?

Common Assisted Living Retirement Home Questions 3 | Who lives at your community?

Our specialty is catering to people with dementia, who need memory care.  The care that we provide is designed specifically for each resident on an individual basis.  Our dementia program is called “Join Their Journey” for this reason.  Memory care means something for one resident, but may be completely different from the needs of another resident.  We have residents with widely varying physical, emotional, and cognitive needs.  Through our Join Their Journey approach, we respond to each resident based upon what we know about their Life Story.

Using this approach, our response will be more appropriate.  This is because we are responding to the resident as a person, rather than using a “How to” method of caring for dementia, in general.  It is very easy, and common, for people to generalize dementia as a disease.  The misconception is that dementia is a disease.  In fact, dementia is a syndrome caused by various diseases:

Alzheimer’s Disease – the most common and best known cause for dementia.  Approximately 5.5 million people in America suffer from Alzheimer’s.

Multiple Sclerosis – a very rare form of MS can actually cause dementia.

Parkinson’s Disease – usually associated with the physical symptoms (i.e. tremors, loss of control), this disease may result in dementia during its progression.

Brain Injury – any injury to the head may result in temporary or permanent dementia.

Vascular Dementia – often caused by stroke or other restriction of blood flow to the brain.

Huntington’s Disease – similar to Parkinson’s, this disease is better known for its physical symptoms, but can also result in dementia at some time during its progression.

Alcoholism – the extensive abuse of alcohol may damage your liver.  However, it also tends to result in dementia.  Depending upon how severe the damage that has been done to the brain, the results may be temporary if the consumption of alcohol is terminated or minimized.  The consumption of alcohol is strongly discouraged for anyone suffering from dementia caused by another illness.

Each type of dementia has “typical” symptoms and behaviors.  However, our method of responding to the individual makes this fact immaterial.  We provide complete memory care for people with all types of dementia.