I had a lot of fun last week when I got to speak at two caregiver events sponsored by The Kensington, a beautiful new assisted living/memory care facility in Sierra Madre, California.
Although I’d only been on a speaking hiatus for three months while caring for my husband through his back surgery, I felt like I’d been away for a really long time.
I had great fun meeting new people, visiting with family and professional caregivers and sharing my favorite stories, including the one about the “Avis Affair”.
Our family didn’t know about stroke-related dementia when my dad asked my mother to arrange a sex date for him with the girl he’d taken to his high school senior prom in 1938. Dad’s obsession with Avis went on for months. None of us understood the science behind the damage the stroke caused in his brain, but my mother did know my dad, and eventually she accepted the fact that “he wasn’t playing with a full deck”, and she decided to just have fun with the story.
If you are caring for someone who has Alzheimer’s or any other dementia-related disease, you may experience moments when you are shocked by behavior that you consider to be inappropriate. If you have 16 minutes and want to learn more about sex and dementia, click on the link below to my TEDx video, “Having the Sex Talk With Dad”.
