Conclusion

Dementia is a very sad disease that not only effects the patients but their family and friends also.

Although there are different degrees of dementia, they all are very difficult to cope with and hopefully someday there will be a cure!

http://alzheimers.about.com/od/research/a/Coffee_Alz.htm

http://alzheimers.about.com/od/research/a/AGEs_Memory.htm

Real Life Example

The Notebook was a book and a movie (Nicholas Sparks) based on a real story

Duke reads to his wife Allie the story of their love to try to bring her reality (she has a high grade of dementia)

She is confused and most of the time doesn’t even know Duke is her husband

Once in a while she remembers but then she slips back into dementia

http://www.bradfordlee.com/photos/thenotebook1.jpg

History of Dementia

References to dementia can be found in Roman medical texts and in the philosophical works of Cicero

Marce, in 1863, first described the shrinkage present, the enlarged ventricles and ’softening’ of the brain.

In 1907 Alois Alzheimers identified the senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles that are common to the brains of people with Alzheimer’s type dementia.

Basic Causes of Dementia

Loss of nerve cells in the frontal and temporal lobes

Deposits of damaged proteins inside of nerve cells

Shrinkage of the frontal lobes and temporal lobes

Treatment

Doctor visits: neurologist, psychiatrist, family doctor, internist, or geriatrician.

Aricept drug delays the worsening of symptoms.

Important to control high blood pressure, monitor high blood cholesterol and diabetes, and don’t smoke!

Medication is prescribed for agitation, anxiety, depression, and sleeping problems.

Balanced diet will help with overall health of the dementia patient.

Help from Family

Help the patient continue in their daily routine, physical activities and social contacts.

Remind the patient details of their lives, time, date, where they live.

Big calendar, a list of daily plans, list of how to use common household items

Karma

All deeds that are done in ones life will affect their future lives as well. Therefore you are responsible for your own life, and how it affects other people’s lives. The gods they worship are the ones who distribute that karma, or reward for good things you have done in your life. The law of Karma not only applies to humans, but any living thing.

Karma is even supposedly found in physics, for every action there is a reaction. According to Buddhism, intention is a very important

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma

http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/karma.html

Corinn Schaafsma

Religion

The Ideals

            An ideal Buddhist is one who seeks to live a selfless life. They live in a way that will let them enter nirvana, which is the place in which suffering, craving, greed, hatred and delusion do not exist any longer. To be tied to the physical body will prevent them from being able to enter nirvana, so they strive to separate themselves from this. There is a story of a bodhisattva that is a great example to the ideal Buddhist. He was walking through the jungle when he came upon a mother tiger and her two cubs. The mother had not eaten for several days and was becoming desperate, desperate enough to kill her own two cubs to keep herself alive. The Bodhisattva saw this as a great injustice and decided to lay down his own life to save the two cubs lives. Or another example would be the Buddhist monk who burned himself alive in protest of the war. He made no sounds while burning and stayed in the meditative pose the whole time. Both of these stories show how you must separate yourself from this physical world to achieve the ultimate goal of nirvana.

            Christianity

Yeah i forgot to post mine. if you want to peer review me i printed out some copies.. thanks

Yeah i forgot to post mine. if you want to peer review me i printed out some copies.. thanks

Other than taking the correct classes, a lot can be done before college to prepare for a career in music therapy. Because of the amount of music a therapist would have to deal with daily, an aspiring music therapist should try to be involved in as much music programs as possible. During high school, some of the classes a student might take to prepare for music therapy are music theory, science, communications, english and psychology. Out of school projects such as day care, volunteering at nursing homes and leadership activities are also helpful. Once in college, a student majoring in music therapy would take music, education, psychology, special education, music therapy, and biological and behavioral sciences. A music therapy program is about four and a half years, and over 70 colleges offer these programs. Music therapy programs are usually considered bachelor degrees, although more advanced degrees are available.

Recently information about Don Imus’ racial comment has been all over the news. He called the Rutger’s women’s basketball team a bunch of “nappy headed hoe’s” and is paying dearly for that comment. Originally NSNBC suspended him for 2 weeks, and after a lot of pressuring from their sponsors, MSNBC suspended Imus permanently both from TV and Radio.

I think that calling a basketball team “nappy headed hoe’s” is wrong on so many levels. First of all to make a generalization like that just because the team is primarily black is terribly racist. Its not even nice to say to someone even if their hair is nappy. One thing that bothers me is that MSNBC seemingly only fired Imus because they lost money, they should have fired him for such a comment immediately once it was said. NSNBC said things like “we must have confidence in the values that our company portrays” which is a nice thought. Their statements to the public was posted online along with Imus’ apology. They were very carefully written and apologetic, but I don’t know if I bought it. After all the hired Imus because he was a “shock jock”, controversy is what he is payed to make. If they really wanted to portray good values they would have never hired such a crude man in the first place.

Imus in the Morning

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036713/

Christine Cleary had to deal with two very difficult things in her life, unfortunately at the same time. Just as her husband was losing the battle of cancer in his lungs, her mother started to develop Alzheimer’s disease. As time went on her mother began to forget how to start a car, and do simple tasks around the home. The most difficult thing was she would forget which of her family members were still alive. A couple years later, Cleary lost her husband. She began fearing that she would start to forget who her husband was, much like her mother forgot things due to Alzheimer’s.

Cleary discussed her epiphany of realization.. there is a difference between remembering and a memory. She says remembering has to do with simple things like tasks around the house, but real memories have to do with the heart. She will never forget her husband’s presence and personality, although she might forget simple things like his physical appearance.

I thought this was a very interesting and hopeful view on Alzheimer’s disease, that people will never really forget personalities. Perhaps this explains why people with increasing dementia get scared even when they see people they love like family members. They are confused because they don’t remember appearances of husbands, wives and siblings, but they do remember their personalities. This was well written and definitely a worth while read. I wish she would have talked a little bit more about her husbands journey through cancer and incorporated that in the story.

The Deeper Well of Memory

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9416042