Challenges with daily tasks

Challenges with daily tasks

There are daily tasks that we’re all good at and some that we struggle with because we’re stepping into unfamiliar territory. Things like creating a new dish for the evening meal, for example. When we’re tired we may even have a memory blank where we can’t remember what combination of buttons we need to use to operate the microwave. In general though, we don’t have any trouble with carrying out familiar tasks that over the years have become second nature to us. Things like making and pouring a cup of tea or driving the same route into work each morning and then home again at night. When we’re tired or are so used to doing a task, it’s even easy to slip into auto-pilot and consciously not even think about what we are doing.

When familiar tasks at home or work start to become challenging and we find ourselves not knowing how to initiate or complete them, it is important to eliminate Alzheimer’s as being the cause.

When it becomes clearly difficult to carry out our daily tasks that we’ve been doing for perhaps the past sixty years, it may be an early warning sign of Alzheimer’s and needs to be discussed with your health care professional. These are some typical examples of warning signs that may indicate a person has Alzheimer’s:

  • Sitting down to play a favourite game and completely forgetting the rules
  • Walking up to the toaster and having no idea what to do with it
  • Having trouble with managing the family or work budget
  • Becoming overwhelmed by the decision of choosing what to wear and then finding getting dressed too difficult
  • Difficulty with navigating to a familiar destination, such as the office or a relative’s house.

Mum’s music students adored her. She brought out their full potential and developed close personal relationships with them, acting as much as a life mentor as a music teacher. While Mum left the invoicing and business side of her business to us to sort out, she was completely clued up on the number of lessons each student had been given, when they started during the term and how much money she was owed. Leading up to Mum’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, we began to find this all slipping.

Mum began to lose pupils, something that had never happened in her 50+ year teaching career. Mum was completely confused about who had paid and even who she would be teaching that day. It got to the point where I am sure she was even forgetting some of the basics that were second nature to her. The whole experience became overwhelming to her.

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