Walk to End Alzheimer's marchers carry flowers representing how their lives are touched by the devastating disease: This is how it affects me personally.

Carrying a purple flower means you lost someone to Alzheimer’s. I carry a Purple Flower as I have lost sever of my patients to Alzheimer’s and family to dementia The list is to long and I am praying that one day the list will stop growing.

The Yellow Flower, this is the flower that Maw Maw is carrying everyday as she must answer the same questions of “what’s next” and “what is this” all day long.  She is my hero!  When I was a caregiver I got to go home at the end of the day. I got to leave the worry and the stress of making sure my patient didn’t wander out of his house or decide that after 80 years of never cooking that he would make breakfast at 3:30 am and almost burn the house down.(True story of one of my patients). As a paid caregiver my time of stress and constant questions had an end. But for those of you who are like my Maw maw, in the thick of it everyday, those who don’t get to clock out and leave the stress and worry behind. You are the HERO’s. You deserve the golden yellow flowers. You are the ones that hold the Blue flowers up.

 The Blue Flowers, this means you are living with Alzheimer’s. Earlier this year my pawpaw was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. So many thoughts rushed through my head when I was told. I first was saddened that I would lose the grandfather that I knew that he would eventually not remember me and all that comes with the slow decaying of the mind. I also thought, that as a Aging life care professional specializing in Dementia that me and my family would somehow be immune or have all the answers (I don’t). I then remembered that it wasn’t about me. My pawpaw is the one having to go through this and he is not the only one.  My other grandfather (Poppy) had dementia and my grandmother-in-law also has it now. Other members of my family have memory loss that has yet to be diagnosed.

There are too many blue flowers in my families garden. That is why I am joining the fight! I am not going to back seat and let dementia win.  Join me in this fight, help raise money for research for a cure, Help us find a White flower (represent the hope for a cure.) If you can’t give financially that’s okay, give up your time, join in on a walk, volunteer to sit with some one and give the caregivers a break, make a meal for them, send the encouragement and lift them up in prayers. In doing so you can carry an orange flower, meaning you support the Alzheimer’s Association.