Hi Shauny, I read your post with intrest and I'm sure you're trying to be of help. How I wished I had found TP years ago as it is, I only joined this year 3/8. Caring for my wife for over the past 11 years mostly learning about Alz as I went along, and poor support from SS and inexperienced care in a NH I chose to take total control for the care of my wife since removing her from the NH. It was a year before SS then got involved and by then I was coping OK.
After reading every thing available on AD five years ago I recall our daughter remark: "Mom reached the final stages a while ago". Where we are then and now only God knows.
The point I'm trying to make is, whenever I have contacted the AS, the Carers Support, SS and the medical profession I'm asked "How can I help You?" When I tell them I don't want help, their response is, well if you don't want help there's nothing we can do. If I were to say "For you to listen and maybe learn, as I have from unnecessary very bad experiences." I suspect they would have said sorry for what you have been put through, ( which is what they said at the time)
and just carry on as they were trained to do. That has been my experience, left with the remark "You keep pushing the boundries."
There has been only one Psychologist interested in our case. She asked to see my wife at home, aware that on a number occasions Doctors had given my wife a matter of days to live. Seeing my wife physicaly recovered I was requested to write up everything I had done since removing my bedridden wife from the NH. The results were published in Signpost :To Older People and Mental Health Matters. That was two and a half years ago, sadly shortly after she moved away from this area to work at a University up north.
The more I have learned about AD as it relates to my wife, the more I discover how little I know.
Learning from TP should be part of the training for all professions involved with both carers and their loved ones.
I have been trying to share my experiences for years, but to no avail, now I can with people at the sharp end on TP. But then, it's those who carry on regardless with accepted ways, who need to look afresh how they treat the carers and cared for.
Sorry to have rambled on but had to get it off my chest.
Best wishes in your endevours and God bless. Padraig