Illinois caregiver uses difficult childhood experience – and her excellent singing voice – to care for dementia patients

Caregiving is skilled work, but it’s a skill that can be acquired in many ways. For Raevyn, she started learning about caring for someone with dementia, when she was just 12-years-old and her grandmother was diagnosed.

“I didn’t even know something like that even existed yet,” she said. “I’m just a kid. And out of nowhere, my grandma started forgetting my name. It was weird.”

But she worked with her grandfather to give her grandmother as normal of a life as she could. She would get frustrated and defensive for her grandmother when people were impatient with her in public or didn’t understand why she needed help ordering at a restaurant.  It was hard as a child, but now Raevyn is able to draw on that experience as a Help at Home caregiver in DeCatur, Illinois.

“I feel like it was a growing experience,” she said. “That’s what brought me to this point I’m at today. I saw the emotions she went through.”

One of Raevyn’s favorite clients has been a patient with Alzheimer’s Disease. His wife was nervous about leaving him with a caregiver, but needed someone to watch him when she had errands – and they also needed some help around the house.

“Every time I walk into a client’s house, I try as much as possible to make them feel comfortable,” Raevyn said. She said people are naturally nervous about a stranger coming in to help with personal care. So she tries to spend a little time getting to know them on the first day. As they were talking, they learned that Raevyn loved to sing, and her client loved to hear music.

“I’ve been singing honestly my whole life,” she said. “Sometimes people around me tell me to shut up, because I’m singing too much.” She has even written and recorded her own original music that is available online. Her performing name is Raee$.

On that first day, she sang a couple of songs for the client and he nodded along with joy and that became one of their favorite ways to connect. “After that, they said, ‘you can just sing whenever,” she remembered. “So if I’m just walking around, doing things for them, like cleaning up or wiping stuff off, I’m singing. And he’s just in there at the table smiling and bobbing his head. He just wanted to hear me keeping him company.”

Singing worked particularly well with this patient because she said he wasn’t much of a talker – but with other patients she finds that she can connect just by asking about their childhoods or their families. With one dementia patient, she helped her do simple crossword puzzles to exercise her mind.

“I try to make sure that they stay lifted and continue to feel like a person, because it’s hard being a dementia patient. I can’t imagine losing my memory and not remembering someone that I’m around every single day. I try to put myself in their shoes,” she said.