u/GrimroseGhost

Hello! My grandfather was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and I was wondering if anyone had ideas of activities I could get my grandfather to do to try and prevent further decline?

He pretty much spends all day, every day sitting on the couch watching tv. He has no hobbies. He has no friends. He has no interests. He rarely leaves the house except for appointments and walking his dog.

His neurologist is concerned by this and has pretty much ordered him to do activities that use his brain. We’ve gotten some word search books and told him he has to do five a day and he has some puzzle books as well. We’ve told him that he has to go to the local senior center regularly so that he can socialize. He keeps saying that he has nothing in common with those people because he doesn’t have hobbies, he doesn’t like sports, he has nothing to talks about. We’ve just started all of this to it’s very tbd if he actually follows through with it. He’s also been told he needs to be out walking for at least 20 minutes a day.

What are other things I can try to get him to do? Or maybe places I could try and take him to that don’t have a ton of walking? I was thinking about brining over lunch and a jigsaw puzzle to spend some time working on it with him. Any ideas on ways to hold him accountable or make sure he does these things? I don’t live near him so I unfortunately can’t check on him as much as I’d like to.

He was my grandmother’s caregiver for about 25+ years and has been pretty lost and depressed since she passed and we don’t really know how to get him to do things and be invested in his future.

What are exercises I can do to build up the stability in my hands? I have a lot of issues with hand pain and subluxations. I’ve found resources in other joints in the body but I haven’t really found anything hand specific. Does anyone have any resources or suggestions of how to build joint stability in your hands?

This is a very random question that I am now very curious about.

How did they add indoor plumbing to Venice? Does Venice have a proper sewer system?

I’m curious since there’s public and private restrooms. Everything is an island, including man made ones that are sinking and everything is incredibly old and historic. Hoe did they add it in? Did they have to dig up streets to add plumbing? Is there a processing plant for the waste or does it just go to into the canals/ bay? When did Venice get plumbing?? Was it a late implementation because they had to figure that out?? It’s not like you can dig in a normal city and utilize what’s underground. I imagine they would’ve had to worry about water coming into wherever they dug and destabilizing sections of the city.

I feel like I have a very atypical experience when I pass out and I’m curious to see if other people experience this or know why I experience this.

I used to pass out and recover very quickly, only a few minutes. Then I started treating symptoms and stopped fainting. A while ago, I got an infection and lost a bunch of weight as a side effect and it worsened my POTS symptoms significantly and changed how they present.

I started fainting again. The first time I fainted, it was twice in a row and it took me a while to recover that night, I was a little rough the next day but could still do things. The next time I fainted it was twice in a row again and it took me a week to recover and gain back my energy. The next day I could barely walk or get off the couch. If I did walk, I was so wobbly and felt like I was a newborn deer trying to walk and I had to use my cane indoors. I felt exhausted and wiped out that week. The next time I fainted, it was just once and it only took a few days to recover that time but it was still the same thing the next day. I could barely walk or be upright and was incredibly wobbly and symptomatic when I did walk.

When I do pass out, it’s a very slow process for me to actually go out and then coming back around is slow. It can take a few minutes for me to gain consciousness but it’s been taking 30-40 for me to get to a place where I can speak or even move. Multiple doctors have said to me that it sounds like the post ictal phase after a seizure so I’m going to a neurologist to get checked out and see if it could be seizure activity. But I don’t think it is because I kept passing out around someone who has epilepsy and is very familiar with different types of seizures and they said it didn’t look like it could have been a seizure. I’m still getting checked to be safe but I think my overall baseline health is so bad and that’s why it’s taking so long for me to recover. I’m working on trying to gain weight to see if it helps

I’m on medication now and doing the CHOP protocol so it’s been several months since I last passed out so I don’t know if the recovery time and experience has changed. I’m pretty sure I don’t have ME/CFS so that’s not causing the long recovery time.

Does anyone else take a while to recover from passing out like that? Any idea why that could be or how I could improve my recovery time if it happens again?

This is like the 3rd time this week I’ve woken up with my hip sublaxed. What do you guys recommend to help keep your hips in place while sleeping? I tend to sleep on my side which is why it keeps happening

It’s only in the past several months that my POTS has become severe. It worsened after I lost a bunch of weight due to infections and I developed a massive fear of passing out. My overall health is so bad that when I pass out, it can take several days, to a week for me to recover. I can only walk and stand for about 5 minutes before I start experiencing bad symptoms.

When things first started getting bad, I barely left my apartment because I was so scared I would pass out again and because any sort of activity made me feel so bad. I was barely functional and ended up moving back in with my parents. I’m on meds now and doing the CHOP protocol so I’m doing slightly better now, but passing out has been so traumatic to me that I am afraid to leave the house. I don’t want to test my limits and risk passing out and setting my progress back. I haven’t been in a store in months. When I was living on my own, I did grocery pickup and ordered take out to survive. My parents keep trying to get me to leave the house, but I’m just so scared of something happening and my symptoms getting bad or passing out while I’m out of the house. I bought a rollator to give myself more control and options for when I’m out but I haven’t used it yet. I pretty much only leave these days for appointments. I’m just so scared of getting bad again. I’m pulling out of a family trip because I just can’t handle it

I don’t think I have ME/CFS, but I am so terrified of the possibility and the possibility of overdoing it and pushing my limits that that is also keeping me at home

Home has just become my ultimate safe space because I know I can mange my symptoms and not risk overdoing it.

Has this happened to anyone else? How have you dealt with it? Did it improve as you learned how to manage your symptoms better? Anyone have any tips for managing the anxiety around leaving the house and symptom management?