On Day 15 of our #DAI #Hello my name is blog series for World Alzheimer's Month #WAM2018, we feature long time pioneer advocate Carole Mulliken from the USA.

Carole is one of the founders of the Dementia and Advocacy Support Network International (DASNI) and is also a board member of Dementia Alliance International (DAI). She co hosts one of DAI's Peer to Peer Support Groups on Friday afternoons.

We are honored Carol shares her extensive wisdom and experience with us; she is a shining example of living positively with dementia, for well over 20 years.

HERE FOR A REASON

Hello my name is Carole, and it seems, I am still here for a reason.

Although I was not aware of it, the surgery had been long and difficult. I learned later that it had been a quintuple bypass surgery. I was told the heart attack continued stubbornly for so many hours, they weren’t certain they could perform the operation I needed to survive. I’m glad I missed all the drama.

Later, in the telemetry unit, a vivid red, heart-shaped pillow with a picture of a heart and all its supporting vessels was presented to me, as if to congratulate me for something. I remember thinking the congratulations belonged to the surgeon.

My husband had died a few short months earlier, and to be honest, I wasn’t all that sure I wanted to stick around myself. But all these hospital people had gone to such great lengths to assure that I could stay alive, It would seem ungrateful and rude to tell them that.

Some of the nurses knew what a challenge my surgery had been. Their eyes would grow wide and they’d solemnly shake their heads as they told me,

“You are here for a reason,you know. You are here for a reason.”

I waited for the them to reveal the reason. I had already been disabled for ten years and now would be living completely alone, following major heart surgery. One of the cardiologists had told my family I would never get out of a hospital bed without an assist. I couldn’t imagine what reason I might have for continuing to exist. I nearly asked one nurse what the reason was, but she had patted my hand and scurried off to her next task. I hugged my puffy heart pillow and slid to sleep.

Taking my heart pillow with me, from the hospital, to the skilled nursing facility, back to the hospital and then to assisted living, I spent six months under others’ supervision. I couldn’t walk anywhere without a physical therapist hanging on me with a gait belt. Independence and autonomy were all I struggled for. After six months, when the physical therapist finally declared me an “Independent Community Ambulator,” I felt better than when I had gotten my driver’s license at 16. Liberty at last, to ambulate anywhere in the community!

Then I realized I needed to know the reason or purpose for which I would ambulate freely.

My Mission

Twenty years ago, I had written out my mission in life, my purpose for being, in a journal. I unearthed it to see if it might help me.

“I believe my mission in life is to discover, continually develop, and use my unique, God-given gifts to help those in my circle of influence to learn and grow in knowledge, skill, and character. I hope though love, clear communication, and faith in others, to assist them in discovering and developing their own unique talents and abilities and find the personal missions in their own lives.

I believe people are essentially good, that they have an inherent drive to grow in positive ways toward their own uniqueness as God intended; that human diversity is the medium in which adaptation and endurance flourish; that life is growth and change – a process with both polarities and cycles, and that life is fundamentally good.

I believe that paths to one’s personal mission are many, that knowledge of it is equally in the subconscious as in the conscious. Quietude, reflection, reverie, and prayer are all means of discovering it. I continually learn how to better reach those states and help others to do so as well.

My personal gifts of intelligence, expressiveness, creativity, intuition, and a capacity for reflection manifest best in conversation and writing. I strive to provide for others the opportunity to reflect and make choices about their lives in a considered way – in contrast to the hectic and driven ways in which we now live. I strive to be the kind of person in whose presence others the world as full of possibilities and themselves as valued, creative, and unlimited in potential.

I believe that quality education increases the breadth of choices one has and is inherently worthwhile. I strive to be increasingly more a product of my choices rather than my conditions and enable others to do the same.

I will develop an attitude of gratitude, practice a belief in abundance, and approach conflicts with a win/win attitude, accompanying negotiation skills, and choosing only love.”

Back then it seemed to fit me. For many years, I loved educating teenagers, so they could begin their adult lives. When I was disabled and no longer able to teach in a public-school classroom, my purpose became helping recovering addicts reestablish their lives. I helped people newly diagnosed with dementia at an online message board. That was only a different type of student and a different platform. I loved doing that for twelve years. When I was offered a chance to teach English again, this time online for a community college, my original context was restored, and I felt like my old self. I worked from home and didn’t even need to ambulate. But then the community college system decided they would no longer hire adjuncts from out of the state, and 250 of us lost our jobs with the stroke of a policy pen. I had lost a context in which to pursue my life purpose. I was ambulatory, but I had nowhere to go.

Worse, my belief in abundance was challenged by considerable loss of intellect and creativity following a series of mini-strokes. Holes appeared in my brain where previously abundant brains cells had been. Brain scans proved it. Oddly enough, I still had the drive to create new things, but had no ability to accomplish them. Furthermore, I still “felt” I was brilliant but knew I was profoundly disabled in certain areas. An analogy I used was that if I were talking about running rather than thinking, I had one leg as long as Wilt Chamberlain’s and the other cut off mid-thigh. As a runner, I couldn’t even get myself to the track. It seemed my brain couldn’t make it to workouts either.

Thinking about Thinking

What I was doing just now is called “meta-cognition” or thinking about one’s thinking. If that sounds to you like a weird kind of navel gazing, that’s probably because you have a capable adult brain. Children, and particularly children with learning disabilities, are taught meta-cognition to help them become conscious of their thinking and more aware of their strengths and of strategies useful to their own learning.

People with dementia have newly acquired learning disabilities. When taught to think differently, they can learn to value themselves once again. It’s a new kind of special education for adults.

Discovering Dementia Alliance International

When I discovered the Dementia Alliance International, I found people with dementia who understood that loving, respecting, and treating others with dementia with kindness heals and empowers them.

With DAI, I have a renewed life’s purpose – a reason why I can still be here. I have survived a heart attack and dementia to help others learn how to think differently while having dementia.

It is a discipline. When they achieve it, they will have earned not a puffy, red heart, but a purple one!

Carole Mulliken © 2018

DAI’s vision: “A World where people with dementia are fully valued and included.”

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