- With Mayo Clinic health education outreach coordinator
Angela Lunde
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Angela Lunde
Angela Lunde is a dementia education specialist in the education core of Mayo Clinic's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the Abigail Van Buren Alzheimer's Disease Research Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Angela Lunde
The transfer of information about dementias, as well as understanding the need for participation in clinical trials, is an essential component of the education core.
Angela is a member of the Alzheimer's Association board of directors and co-chair of the annual Minnesota Dementia Conference. She is a member of the Dementia Behavior Assessment and Response Team (D-BART), a multidisciplinary outreach service assisting professional and family caregivers in understanding and managing difficult behaviors often present in dementia. She facilitates several support groups, including Memory Club, an early-stage education and support series, and more recently, helped to develop and now deliver Healthy Action to Benefit Independence and Thinking (HABIT), a 10-day cognitive rehab and wellness program for people with mild cognitive impairment.
Angela takes a personal interest in understanding the complex changes that take place within relationships and among families when dementia is present. She is particularly interested in providing innovative and accessible ways for people with dementia and their families to receive information and participate in valuable programs that promote well-being.
"Amid a devastating disease, there are tools, therapies, programs and ways to cope, and it is vital that families are connected to these resources," she says.
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Alzheimer's blog
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Oct. 13, 2007
Coping: It's all about attitude
By Angela Lunde
Over the past several weeks, I have been reading how many of you are coping as you care for a loved one with a dementia. There were many responses on this from attending support groups, using humor, to simply finding whatever strength you can muster on a given day and moving forward.
In my interactions with caregivers over the years, I have observed the various ways in which coping takes place. For example, I have found that many caregivers begin to incorporate a set of beliefs and expectations about their situation that helps them cope. One way they do this is by learning to separate what they can and cannot control.
For example, once the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (or FTD, Lewy Body or other dementia) is made, caregivers quickly find that modern medicine is limited in its ability to treat or prevent the progression of the disease. While the disease process will not change, coping caregivers know one thing they can control is their attitude and their own expectations about the disease. They understand that dementia includes changes in the person's personality and behaviors.
So, when disruptive behaviors (agitation, paranoia) are present, or their loved one speaks hurtful words, coping caregivers are able to keep an objective attitude about these behaviors; they can separate the disease from the person, and therefore the person from the behaviors.
Lela Knox Shanks cared for her husband for many years, and wrote the book, "Your Name is Hughes Hannibal Shanks." In that book she wrote: "... the attitude we choose ultimately determines how we approach problems and how we solve them. It sets the tone and influences the quality of our interactions with the person. Attitude determines the quality of our care."
To follow up on my last entry regarding Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, here is a little more information on frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
In general, FTD usually occurs between the ages of 30 and 70. Only about 10 percent to 15 percent of all dementia cases are FTD. FTD is caused by the loss of the neurons on the frontal and temporal part of the brain, but what causes the loss of neurons is usually unknown.
A small number of people with FTD have the presence of Pick bodies, abnormal protein-filled structures that develop within cells. All cases of FTD used to be called Pick's disease, but now that name is reserved for the subtype that features Pick bodies. The hallmark of FTD is a gradual, progressive decline in behavior and/or language. As the disease progresses, these deficits cause significant impairment in social and/or occupational functioning and result in an increasing dependency on caregivers.
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