"I always tell people that one magical aspect of working with people with dementia is that you can still communicate, even if the affected person has lost the ability to speak coherently. I think that people with dementia develop a gift, which is the ability to communicate in a nontraditional way. This forces "us," the unaffected persons, to learn their language. It is a language with pure emotions, spelled out by facial expressions and body language.

In my work with those with dementia here in Vermont, I began to learn that new language, and watch those with dementia learn it, too. I will never forget a time when I was working as an activities assistant at a nursing home, and saw two of the patients laughing and appearing to tell stories to one another. Curious about what was so funny, I drew myself closer to them.  

To my astonished ears, I discovered they were not using sentences that made any sense. I could not follow their conversation as "Marion" was discussing the children she used to work with and "Lorraine" was pointing to a man across the room and commenting on his clothing. I could sense by their bodies leaning in toward one another, and by their smiling eyes and mouths, that they felt they were having a perfectly legitimate conversation. I soon learned to communicate with them in a similar fashion. Before long, I shared laughter with "Lorraine," although I was unsure if we were laughing about the same thing. The content of our conversations was not as important as the emotion behind it.

As I became fluent in their language, I developed intimate relationships with my patients. Though once perhaps labeled "the Alzheimer's patients who misbehave and get angry," these were people with true feelings, upset over the idea of not understanding why they could not go to work, or why their children were not coming home from school. I began to realize that addressing their feelings in the moment is the most important thing of all. It didn't matter if they mourned for their deceased husband as if he had just died yesterday, what mattered is that you connected with them in their reality..."       To read the rest of this article, please visit our blog.