Cannabis Helps Dementia

May is Mental Health Awareness month in the US, but if you have a loved one living with dementia, you are acutely aware that mental health is largely ignored every day. In this episode, we share a personal story of how the US Health System fails people living with dementia. My mom’s old friend, “Evelyn”, has been experiencing increased anxiety and confusion since the coronavirus pandemic shut down...

Featuring Primrose, Engaged Living Executive Director, John Wotring and Dan O'Brien, RN Primrose Engaged Living is a beacon of hope for how care could be delivered to those living with dementia. When I first learned about Primrose, and the leading edge work they are doing, I sent a couple emails to the Executive Director, and left a couple voicemails. It did not seem like they were very intere...

Living with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis for several years, Becky suddenly became uncontrollably violent. Her family didn’t know how or what to do to help her. We met Becky’s husband, Gary, at a great conference in Northern California in 2019, “Medical Cannabis 2.0”  sponsored by Home Instead of Sonoma County and the Hospice Services of St. Joseph’s Hospital. Gary is a self described “religious,...

On my mom’s journey through dementia, we were forced to look outside-the-box for solutions to her extremely agitated behavior and crippling anxiety. We learned there was going to be a Medical Cannabis Symposium in Northern California called “Cannabis as Medicine, Changing the Face of Aging” produced by  Home Instead Senior Services, Sonoma County and Hospice services of St. Joseph’s Hospital....

We were once carefree below-the-line film and TV workers: I did props and set dressing and Dave was an Assistant Director and occasional actor. Then we were thrust into family caregiving when my mom was suddenly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. We learned so much from my mother’s decade-long journey that I felt we had to share our best practices with other families in crisis. We provided care g...

Desperate to understand more about my mom’s journey, I found Teepa Snow and her Positive Approach to Care. I devoured Teepa's free videos on YouTube, of course read her GEMS book and was eager for more. I signed up for her two-day, in real life Certified Training course and learned how to connect with my mom in a way I thought was no longer possible. When Teepa came to California, I was thrill...

I was so excited to go to our very first big-time-legit medical cannabis conference because they were going to have a panel on Cannabis and Alzheimer’s Disease! Dave was not as excited as I was cuz it was really expensive. We put it on a credit card, dressed in our cannabis-best and headed out to this very expensive medical conference that we below-the-line-film-workers had no real business attend...