Mom and Cardine

The relationship of Mom and her home aide Cardine is a wonderful one. We’ve had a few different aides come to fill in for Cardine when she takes a day off, but none of them hold a candle to her. Cardine is the best of the best, cream of the crop, reliable, compassionate, empathetic, patient, attentive, understanding and professional in all that she does. She knows my mother better than I do at this point and lord knows has made her life better…and mine also. I have learned so many things from Cardine, in that she has shown me how to better understand my mother, and to relate to her disease in a way that will help her situation rather than aggravate it.

For the untrained person, dealing with a family member with dementia can be very difficult and frustrating on a daily basis as the disease progresses. There is no way we can totally understand their behavior when they are in the throws of an attack and sometimes we get angry or frustrated which only makes the matter worse. Cardine is so far above the rest of us, in that she gets it…seems to understand exactly what the patient is going through and proceeds accordingly. She doesn’t aggravate an already intense situation, she talks softly, patiently and in the end my mother does exactly what Cardine wants, as in the case of a bath. It may take asking her once every 30 minutes for 4 hours, but she knows that Mom will never take that bath when she is digging her heels into the ground…but over time she will soften and finally give in. In the end, everyone is happy. Cardine is happy to clean her patient, Mom is happy because really, a bath makes everyone feel good and I feel good when arriving home after work knowing that the day went well.

I feel very blessed to have Cardine in our lives.