Caring with love:

transformations, perspectives and possibilities in the care of people diagnosed with dementia

Abstract

Caring for the other diagnosed with dementia is an experience that goes beyond the understanding of what we have noticed. It means bringing to itself the responsibility for the patient's quality of life. This study sought to understand the experience of caregivers of elderly people with dementia from a WhatsApp group called Caring with Love that brings together wives, daughters, daughter-in-law and where their anxieties about the multidimensionality of this experience are expressed. The speech of 23 caregivers was extracted from the group, and submitted to the parameters of the phenomenological method and analyzed under the perspective of Martin Heidegger's Phenomenology, 5 thematic categories originated: a) Daily life becomes a whirlwind of emotions and feelings: transformations from everyday life; b) About the treatment: “tips” from those who have been through the experience!; c) The dimension of the being-caregiver and looking at oneself: helplessness is experienced!; d) Launched in the world of dementia, loneliness is expressed: family and social distance; e) In your pain, my pain; in your work, my work; in your experience, my experience: the experience of solicitude and generosity among caregivers. It is concluded that being a caregiver of people diagnosed with dementia is something that goes beyond the understanding of the act of giving oneself to the other and the creation of the group makes it possible to feel cared for, welcomed in their pain and in their helplessness.