Upon arrival to the nursing home, one of my co-leaders and myself, set up a table with snacks and refreshments we brought in for the participants. The meeting was being held within the same lounge area as last week. This room provides ample space, bright lighting and an intimate atmosphere where the participants are able to hear and see the speaker as well as listen and interact with one another. Management was readily available to assist us with whatever we needed and made us feel very welcomed. This definitely helped in easing our nerves. This week there were ten participants in attendance, nine females and one male resident. Five of the previous participants did not return for this week’s lecture but we did gain three new participants. It was overheard that some of the participants that did not return were not feeling well or were too depressed to attend.
The meeting started 5 minutes late due to waiting for one of the co-leaders to arrive. This was a little annoying because said co-leader did not notify the other two co-leaders of their impeding tardiness. They also walked in while the lecture was in session. To begin the lecture, I welcomed everybody back and asked for the new members to introduce themselves. After all introductions were done, including the co-leaders’, I went over our rules for the new members. I then proceeded to the first objective of reviewing last week’s topic and opened up the floor to any questions that the members may have had in retrospect. No one had questions and one of the members stated, “ You gave us a lot of great information and answered our questions.” Many of the other members agreed to the statement made. This made us feel good because it showed the co-leaders and myself that members were interested in learning what we were teaching them.
I then proceeded to the second objective of introducing and talking about the various treatments, medicines, and alternative treatments that are known for Alzheimer’s. This lead the members to share stories about their family members that suffer or suffered with Alzheimer’s and how they saw the medications either impact their family member either in a positive or negative way. One of the new members joined in the conversation right away but the other two were a little reluctant to share, as were some of the returning members. This made me aware that we are still in the transitioning phase of the group but are closer to the working stage. We listened to what every one had to say and there were a couple of questions and sharing of feelings. Some of the questions asked were, “Do the medications act on the brain or the physical body?” and “Since patients do not get better and medications can cause side effects, why don’t they create a pill to give to Alzheimer’s patients that can put them to sleep?” The participant whom asked the latter question was sharing that her husband passed away with Alzheimer’s and that she would have rather he just took a pill to put him to sleep (death) than to have watched him progressively get worse and her go through terrible care giver role strain. This then lead the members to bring up examples of the Death with Dignity Law that exists in some states and it started causing a deviation from the actual lecture topic. At that time my co-leader did an excellent job at redirecting the conversation back to the main topic while still addressing the member’s concern. The third co-leader also intervened when necessary but mainly served as the meeting minute taker.
The meeting lasted approximately 30 minutes and the members were informed when the ending of
