Why Are We Here?

What you see a lot of are places that cater to residents' families' needs and desires. I cannot tell you how many communities that I have gone to where the dementia care wing looks like a hotel. A nice hotel, but a hotel, nonetheless. The ceilings are high, the chairs are cushioned, and a glass chandelier hangs near the entrance. Places like these are not made for residents with dementia: they are made to make you want to pay for your loved one to live there. Unless you do not do it. The most critical work is to listen. This seems to be most challenging for people to do. Listen with intent and understand your purpose without a doubt. This is the process of this article: learn the skill of listening to know, without a doubt, you are a healer with a purpose and calling. You will appreciate the need for this refinement process. The material will guide you through the journey. As you listen, you will arrive on the other side of the impostor syndrome, never to fear or doubt again, place it where it serves you as momentum to rise to your highest and best self, over and over and over, in your ever-evolving journey. You Are a Natural-Born Healer I just want to live in a way that either wakes people up or shakes people up. There are two main types of sleep apnea. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) involves intermittent blockage of the upper airway, while central sleep apnea (CSA) occurs when there is a problem in the brain. Obstructive sleep apnea is most common. In OSA, the pharynx (throat) repeatedly collapses during sleep. The person with OSA fights to breathe against a blocked airway, resulting in dropping blood oxygen levels.

Eventually, the sense of suffocation wakes the person, their throat muscles contract, the airway opens, and air rushes in under high pressure. When the airway is opened, the rushing air allows the patient to once again drift back to sleep, but it creates a loud, gasping sound. People with OSA are generally not aware that this is happening, although their bed partners often have severely disrupted sleep from the snoring and gasping. This cycle may repeat itself many times throughout the night. This constant waking from deep sleep, as well as the loss of oxygen in the blood, can cause next-day sleepiness, brain fog, poor concentration, and mood changes. Employees start beginning to skip more assignments, the level of employment starts going down, and the colleagues also continuing to complain or talk instead of working together to fix issues. People avoid talking to each other, begin assembling piles of complaints, and the atmosphere will turn poisonous. Caring About What Others Think To feel acknowledged is a basic need, which is almost universal. All humans adapted to the best function in teams, where the indicator of achievement is an adjustment and getting the trust and admiration of colleagues. Yet this desire takes center stage at times, and what people think of us takes on greater relevance than what they feel about themselves. They may exhaust themselves trying to be pretty good, hard-working sufficient, desirable enough, or sufficiently productive to feel appreciated. The self-worth is so deeply involved in what people are saying about us. That, in turn, will often contribute to poor self-esteem and loss of trust when we move through our everyday lives needing additional reinforcement from others. They continuously overestimate how often, even how poorly, people care about their shortcomings. They are built to assuage your guilt. They are made so that you can tell your next-door neighbor, Mom is in a great place! They have a really nice chandelier up front. It's so beautiful. Just because a place is beautiful does not mean that it is functional or good or that it has been created with people with cognitive impairments in mind.

I am not saying that a place with a modern look cannot be dementia-friendly, but what I am suggesting is that most people with dementia did not grow up in homes that look like they were built in 2020. Steel countertops, rustic furniture, and wrought-iron handles on cabinetry look nice, but if a resident does not know what something is used for, they will not use it. If your community's communal kitchen has a sink that looks like it was made in the year 3000, your residents might not even know that it's a sink. A lot of well-meaning communities have begun to rely on technology to care for people living with dementia. You may find that there are interactive computer programs for residents to use or even a Nintendo Wii bowling game set up. Whether I have opened a wound or opened a heart, I have touched a life and helped bring a change. Envision Your Arrival Through hearing my story, my hope is you will start to align with this truth for you: I feel confident in being the Healer I am called to be. Upon conception and throughout our developmental years, we are impacted by the imprinting messages of others, our environment, and even cellular memory handed down from previous generations. We are more than we may realize. How we see ourselves or don't see ourselves is distorted from the get-go. This information is valuable, as it can take away the immediate pressure of having to understand everything, including these deep feelings of self-doubt. This is the time to take a step back and observe your life and self with an eye of curiosity. The same inner turmoil of fearing never being good enough, is the same home of the inner teacher, your higher self or Ideal Self (IS). I prefer referring to the higher self as IS, as it symbolically emphasizes that we are at our ideal in the moment. Another side effect of OSA is high blood pressure. I generally recommend testing for sleep apnea for anyone who has high blood pressure, snores, falls asleep easily during the day (especially while driving), has a shirt collar size of 17 inches or larger, or is overweight. The screening test is best done at home, so ask your physician if it can be arranged that way. If it needs to be done in a sleep lab, ask them to do a split night study where they look for sleep apnea during the first half of the night and, if needed, check the CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) measurements during the second half of the night. This way, it can all be done in one night instead of two.

You'll be glad you did. Although some doctors do not consider OSA to be significant until there are fifteen or more apneic episodes per hour of sleep, evidence suggests that even five or more episodes per hour are associated with increased risk of auto accidents and high blood pressure. Basically, if you tend to fall asleep easily during the day, the sleep apnea is likely to be significant. This is also a common problem in CFS/FMS. For sleep testing, the lab will often recommend that you be off all sleep medications for several nights before doing the test. The unintended result of that would be that they become much more anxious about others' points of view and eventually start overthinking. Relationships Any relationship could be harmful to your mental health and safety. There are unhealthy job conditions, colleagues, families, spouses, and personal interactions detrimental to anyone. While no relationship is flawless and disputes and disagreements occur in the best of relationships. The relationship involves a ton of tension, conflict, anxiety, and depression. Depression may cause the preservation of stable and satisfying relationships complicated. Your spouse struggles from anxiety, and the relationship can be so exhausted by their problems that it seems complicated to find the ability to speak. Some who fail to develop relationships or approach anyone because of chronic anxiety can become too insecure or nervous to see others, which may distance themselves socially. Such a gap will contribute to depression and is connected with mental health conditions such as stress, anxiety, and Alzheimer, and overthinking as well. These items are great for people without dementia, but what I have often found is that adults with dementia have a really hard time understanding what these technology programs are or how to use them. This is the same reason why you will not often see residents with dementia use call buttons in their rooms: they don't know that the call button is an option. While fancy tech often makes families feel better (eg, Mom's community gives everyone iPads! It is one thing if the staff is able to integrate technology to use with residents, but is a problem if residents are expected to use it by themselves. Furniture and Patterns

So many care communities do not think correctly about decor for their residents with dementia. They are looking for what looks good instead of what is actually most functional for people with dementia. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen colorful, patterned chairs with no armrests. While these types of options for furniture look nice, they are not practical in a dementia care environment. For one, patterns are often confusing for people living with dementia. Real-I-zation, invites you to choose to be self-aware versus defaulting to auto-pilot and coasting through life. As we engage in the present moment and stay awake, we can step out of the trance of reacting to whatever life throws at us. Rather, we can observe, take ownership in your part of the activity occurring, make a proactive choice as to how to participate, and emerge with authenticity and wonder as you were made to be. The challenge is to be ready to be real so your I am can surface and rise to being the sensation you were born to be. Every experience has something to offer and the molding of your person may be more divinely positioned than the finite eye can see. I grew up feeling invisible in plain sight. The real-I-zation that I had faulty thinking came crashing in on me during a hypnosis session at a training for hypnotherapy. Despite being a seasoned therapist, I was new to hypnosis. I was drawn to hypnotherapy after failing to adequately treat a client who suffered with psychosomatic pain from his recovery from cancer. It was during our session that the inspiring words came to my mind that he needed hypnosis. If you have not yet started sleep medications, this is reasonable. However, I recommend that people with CFS/FMS who have been on sleep medications stay on them during the test, because most CFS/FMS patients need the sleep medications. As a doctor, I need to know whether they are developing sleep apnea from the medication. The Poor Man's Sleep Study Doing a sleep study (called a polysomnogram) in the sleep lab can cost upward of $2,000--and sometimes your insurance company will make your life miserable trying to get them to pay for it.