What kinds of problems do people bring to the group?
Jim – People bring up all kinds of issues. My favorite story is about a stroke survivor’s wife who would always choose the wrong tool when her husband sent her to the basement to get a tool he wanted. He would get very agitated and frustrated. When she raised this during a meeting, another caregivers shared her family’s solution. This family photographed all the tools and put them into a scrapbook. Whenever the husband wanted a tool, he just pointed to the right tool in the scrapbook, which his wife could then find without any problem. It was a perfect solution, which the first wife adopted with great success. People don’t mind talking about what’s on their minds in the group. People are willing to share things that helped them out even when they are intimate in nature. Everyone becomes friends. Some survivors have started socializing together.
