Morning Glory Memory Keeper with Della Goldsworth

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

And Welcome back to answers for elders. Everyone. I am here with a very special guest lady being the name of Della Goldsworth, and she is the author of a wonderful resource book for those of families that are navigating senior care, specifically Alzheimer’s and dementia, and that is morning glory memory keeper, and it’s really it’s true. It’s the memories that that stay with you, right. You know that that’s the record of the memories. So, Della’s thank you so much for being here on the program. Thank you so much for having me. You know, Della, you are a from what I understand, you work with seniors and you have worked with seniors and Alzheimer’s care and in hospice cares. That correct. I do. I’m a certified nursing assistant as well as an activities assistant, and I work primarily with those with dementia. Wonderful, and I do volunteer in hospice care as well, and that’s how I got into caring for seniors, was volunteering in hospice. Wow. And you know, there’s such a gift with those that are working with those with Alzheimer’s Dementia. I love it. My mom had dementia a little bit, not a huge amount, but you know, she’d have episodes like the Paranoias, like all of a sudden when the the janitor. I’ll never forget this. She was in skilled care and and the person that was cleaning would take the mop in right and she’d go in and she’d mop around the bed and my mom that she’s snooping through this. Yeah, I go mom, she’s not snooping, she’s cleaning your room. Oh, I don’t like her, I don’t. It was so funny. It is. That is a common, common symptom. Yeah, yeah, and so it’s takes such a an incredible amount of passion and love for seniors that work to do this work. So what I want to say is, thank you so much. You also for your service. Thank you. I it really is. Actually it comes pretty easy to me. I just love it. I love being with them and making those little moments of difference and it’s wonderful. So I really enjoy it. It’s a very special way to connect and certainly when you understand a little bit more about connecting with seniors and you know the struggles that their families deal with. It’s very powerful, isn’t it? It is. Yeah, so, delling, you went out and you wrote a book. Tell me a little bit about what inspired you to do this. Working with people, especially people who didn’t necessarily have family nearby that we could ask questions. So finding out. The first half of the book goes into detail about writing down, like you said, initially, records of your daily routines, preferences, likes and dislikes, beliefs, every thing that allows you to have a normal day for you. So how you get up in the morning, what you like to drink, tea, coffee, how you take it, your favorite wonderful type of cake or not cake for your birthday. You know, we would celebrate people’s birthdays definitely, and if we didn’t know a favorites, we would go out and either get of vanilla cake or a chocolate cake and sing happy birthday. And I just really got to thinking about being able to personalize care a lot more and make it more customized to each person, based on who they were inside, and being able to have a quick access record to just look on favorite birthday dessert or how they took their coffee. You know, I had a woman who told me she took her coffee with cream and sugar, and I put a little cream and sugar in her coffee and she just made a face just at this. This isn’t right. And I finally found out over a couple of days of talking to you know, there cared for by so many people, then one person may have that information and it doesn’t necessarily trickle around to everybody. And so I finally found out that she actually took her coffee with five sugars and half a cup of cream. And the moment that I was able to hand her that Cup of coffee and to see the expression on her face when she took a sip and that was right, that was her world for that moment, was right, wow, and I loved it and it’s it was those little moments of being able to do the right thing for that person to help them ground their day, so much of their day as chaos and strangeness and fear, and to be able to make just little bits of it be normal and being right. It really makes a huge difference. Well, and you know, this is so interesting that you’re saying this, because we may know the big things that grandmother likes. You know, we might know her favorite colors blue. We might know that she, you know, lived in near the ocean and she liked that. But you know, these are the little things that make life the quality of life. And you know, what you’re doing is you’re providing a resource to build that quality of life as they go through the stages. Absolutely and that’s powerful, you know. You mentioned that. Like you know, we may know these things about grandma, and it goes even further to spouses or to children, and we don’t we know most things about especially about our spouses, you know. We know how they take their coffee, we know, but there’s little things that we don’t even necessarily think to mention to anybody, right, you know that we just naturally do in the morning or that we just just this those little things. Or, you know, especially in cases of elders, their spouse may have been dead for several years or even a little bit, however long, and their children may not have lived around mom or dad for twenty, thirty, forty years. So they may know the basics, or they may know what mom liked best thirty forty years ago, but they don’t necessarily know how mom or dad lives today, right, and so this allows that up to minute information to be known about you, right, and it’s interesting even when you say your spouse, because it’s like, to this day, I learned things about my spouse, right, you know. You don’t look at them when you’re like when is this the case? Exact always. So to be able to have something like that that you can, you know, really connect and understand that these are the way things you know that they like and what they don’t like is probably just as important to absolutely, absolutely you know, because that makes a huge different aspect because they’re not necessarily going to know what they don’t like, they’re just going to know again that something isn’t right. Wow, so to be able to fix that and change it is that’s incredible. Is Wonderful. I had a gentleman who had just arrived at our facility a week or so before this and he was very upset, very agitated, and he he I went into his room and I was trying to figure out what he wanted and he sits down, and I’m going to paraphrase this because he had a very hard time verbalizing things, but he he finally was like, I want that show where people go and buy things and initially my heart dropped because I don’t watch TV and I was I am not going to be able to know what show he’s talking about. But something clicked in my head and I was like think people that go by the antique road show, and he goes yes, so then I’m like, Oh Gosh, what channel is that on? And so I found like okay, I think it’s on the history channel, and it turned out that really he just wanted it on the history channel, and so he sat in his chair and then he got really excited. He because come here and come here, and he comes and he takes me to his refer join and he takes out a diet coke and he hands it to me and he wanted me to open it and I open it and he just looks at me and he was almost crying and he was just so happy and he went and he sat down in his chair in front of the history channel and and I would and at that time, to us thinking of this would have been so much easier if I had simply known that he liked the history channel to be on. MMM. And so you got inspired. And, by the way, everyone we are talking to the Inspirational Della Goldsworth. She is written the Book Morning Glory Memory Keeper, and it is available. What? On Amazon? It’s available on Amazoncom, absolutely, and I have a Web, I’m sorry, facebook page. If you search morning glory services, okay, then you can find it and I’m always happy to answer questions either through there. If you don’t have facebook, Info at Morning Glory Servicescom, and I’m always happy to hear comments or answer questions or and that’s wonderful. So you Got Delhi, you got inspired to write this book and and obviously it must have taken some time for you to come up with everything. How did you do that? Did I asked a lot of questions. I talked to people who are in the healthcare industry, I talked to nurses and CNAS and I talked to people and ask them what would you want people to know about you, because I’m I’m not a writer and I’m really not, and so I had to really ask around and get a lot of information. And then I had several people, one person in particular who did a lot of editing for me, and the woman who wrote my forward, Julie. I gave her the book and she, she and her sister, did a huge editing to the point. I mean she sat the book down, she goes, this is a great idea, but it needs a lot of work, and she proceeded to really rip it apart, which was great and exactly what I needed. And we all need editors. I praise mine all the time actually, and it made the book just amazingly that much better. And so it with a lot of people’s help, is how I really wrote it. And you know, in gathering all that information, what is the greatest thing that you learned through this process? That, first of all, I learned that it was really needed, but I learned that we can make those little bits of difference just by little things like that, like just having this idea and writing it and giving it to people. I’m I give away so many copies of this book just because I want people to have it. I’ll give copies to people to give to grandparents and parents and yeah, so just learning that little things like that can make huge, huge differences. So the month of September, obviously, is all about Alzheimer’s awareness month. Yeah, as you may or may not be aware, we do a lot of work with the Alzheimer’s Association and we are just so thrilled to have you as part of a resource that is available to the families out there and really nationwide. I think it’s really important that we all look at you know, what is it that we can do for, you know, senior loved ones, and so you know, obviously this is a very important program for you to do this. Thank you. Thank you so much. So tell me just again, how do people find your book? Amazoncom searching from morning glory memory keeper and then you can also, if you’re on the facebook page morning glory services, there’s a little button that says by now that takes you directly to the Amazon page. Great, great, and in the last thirty seconds, do you have any party statements about the book? Oh Gosh, you know, the main thing that I’m really trying to push to everybody is that fill this out before you’re diagnosed. Fill this out before I was a problem, because you know you best and taking the time to fill this out, even if you never have to use it. Put it with your will, put it with your advanced directive and have it there as a resource just in case. Wonderful Della. It’s been such a pleasure having you on the program. Thank you so much for having me