Description of common reasons that family provide senior home care for their loved ones with Alzheimer’s

You are one of approximately 34 million Americans providing care to a person with Alzheimer’s at home. You are also one of 43.5 million people in the world providing care to a person with Alzheimer’s.

Primary reasons that families and loved ones decide to be the caregivers provide the care are:

  1. Desire to keep your person in their own home or home environment with loved ones.
  2. Desire to keep your loved one in close proximity.
  3. Inner perceived obligation that are true feelings
  4. Feeling that your care is more loving and caring than paid caregivers.
  5. Promise that loved one would never live in a nursing facility or perceived negative feelings about nursing facilities.
  6. Financial reasons.

There are no wrong reasons for why you chose to deliver care to your loved one. The act of caring for others is noble and honorable. In fact, wouldn’t we all want a loved one to take care of us when we are sick. It is innate to care for those we love. However, loved ones having Dementia or Alzheimer’s can present us with an unexpected and unnatural feeling. We are often caring for our parent or our spouse. These were strong relationships. A spouse is a personality you fell in love with, your companion, your confidant, a person you experienced life with and now that extension of yourself is gone as you knew it.

The dreams of growing old together, sitting on the front porch in your rocking chairs may have come true, but the person sitting next to you is not part of the original dream. This person has a different personality and different behavior. Your spouse may look exactly the same but the comforting and warming traits your familiar with are fading. Your love remains intact, but the emotional and physical demands are difficult to reconcile. If your parent has dementia or Alzheimer’s, you are caring for the person in life that took care of you. Your role model, your strong support. Your roles have now changed, and you experience a mental and physical adjustment that is incredibly difficult to comprehend.

Regardless, the person that has dementia or Alzheimer’s can certainly respond to the disease differently than others with the disease, however, there are distinct similarities. The same is true of the caregiver, how you feel about caregiving is personal to you, however you may share similarities with other caregivers.