By: Mary Ann Drummond, RN
When I was a young girl I dreamed I would grow up and become a nurse. I seldom left home without my nurse’s kit filled with band-aides, cotton balls, and gum drop pills just in case my services were needed. It seemed so simple in those days to comfort and to heal, or at least that is what my Grandmother led me to believe each time she let me practice my skills on her.
If only caregiving were that easy! The reality is there are wounds a band aid cannot heal, diseases medication cannot cure, and hearts so burdened by the weight of caregiving, comfort cannot be found.
I was motivated to write Meet Me Where I Am – An Alzheimer’s Care Guide to share what I have learned from the greatest teachers of all…those whom I have had the pleasure of knowing and caring for along life’s journey who have dementias such as Alzheimer’s.
Serving many years as an executive in the assisted living industry, my passion for dementia care grew stronger as I continued to see how the application of key concepts created beautiful success stories for the residents, the care givers and their loved ones!
I began to teach my care concepts in support groups, public health seminars and caregiver symposiums. I would often hear from attendees afterward how helpful the information had been and would be asked if I had ever considered writing a book? With this prompting, the seeds to write the book were planted.
Meet Me Where I Am – An Alzheimer’s Care Guide was published in 2014. Writing this book has been a life changing experience. Caring for someone with Alzheimer’s disease requires an abundance of knowledge, patience and love. My goal was to give caregivers a tool that would teach, enlighten, and comfort while preparing them for the journey ahead. I was humbled to hear from the many readers how beneficial they found the book to be. When you have someone bring your book to you with the pages coffee stained, dog eared, passages highlighted, and they tell you it was given to them by a friend of a friend, and the same person is wiping tears from their eyes as they thank you for writing the book that has helped them so much, you say a prayer of thanks for being able to be there when you were needed.
Dr. Lisa Verges of MemoryCare Asheville, North Carolina refers to the book as providing “…useful strategies for navigating this journey with grace. It is an excellent and meaningful book and I highly recommend it.” Dr. Kathleen Hayden of Bryan Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Duke University, states “This book will help caregivers and family members understand dementia from the patients’ perspective. Meet Me Where I Am is a must-read for caregivers of all kinds.”
About the Author
Mary Ann Drummond, RN, is the author of Meet Me Where I Am – An Alzheimer’s Care Guide and I Choose to Remember. As the CEO of Angel Tree Consulting, Drummond has a passion for presenting innovative and successful strategies in both caregiver and provider settings to assist individuals with dementia “live their best” each day. With over thirty years of nursing experience and sixteen years as a VP in the assisted living industry developing programs for dementia care, she credits much of her expert knowledge to the greatest teachers of all, those who live daily with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Meet Me Where I Am has entered a third print and has won three IPPY awards including: 2015 Silver Medalist Living Now Book Award for Caregiving, 2016 1st Place Gold Medalist Beverly Hills Book Award for Caregiving, and 2015 CIPA EVVYY 1st Place Book Award for Health and Diet. Ms. Drummond enjoys working with organizations across the country to increase successful outcomes in dementia care.
Website: www.angeltreepublishing.com
Twitter@RN4ALZ
YouTube video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xcHm80LmdEA
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