Things I wish I’d Known

dvellio

There are so many things I wish I had known as I started down this dementia path with my wife. I’m creating this discussion topic as a place where we can share the things we wish we had known. I know in my case there were a lot of them. And knowing some of them in advance would have saved me a lot of money. So it is my hope that as we share these things those who come behind us can learn from our experience and know earlier in the process.
We thought when we remodeled our house in 2009 that we were making it handicap accessible. We put in a ramp, we changed the knobs on the door handles to levers instead of round knobs, we put in a walk in shower, we put in comfort height toilets, but we didn't even think about the problem we created when we put in the deep pile carpet.
I've spent something in the neighborhood of $400 or $500 to avoid having to replace all the deep pile carpet in our house. I figured out very quickly that I couldn't use a lift to move her out of the bed because the lift wouldn't roll on the deep pile carpet. Then later I discovered that the wheelchair didn't work very well on deep pile carpet down the hall and into the dining room. Because caring for someone with dementia is pretty expensive no matter how you do it, I chose to buy plastic runners for those areas where I needed to use the wheelchair.
Eventually I discovered that plastic floor protectors for deep pile carpet weren't really enough when I was using the wheelchair. The solution for that was to put half inch plywood between the plastic runner and the carpet. Of course that means that all those little hooks that were designed to keep the runner from slipping on the carpet are now pushing up through the plastic runner. Had I bought plastic runners for hardwood I wouldn't have that problem.
In spite of all that it is functional and much cheaper than it would have been to replace all the carpet in the house.

ExL

I wish I had known about local organizations that loan out medical equipment. After I bought wheel chairs, walkers, ramps and other devices, I found that I could borrow them from a local church's "Med Shed", or the Southern Tier Independence Center's "Loan Closet". It pays to ask the office for the aging, doctors, nurses, churches, etc. to see what may be available.