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My mom has had a stroke which affected her ability to speak, read and write; thankfully, all of those are coming back with speech therapy. She has has developed severe arthritis in the hand she writes with and her short term memory is very poor. She likes to make lists of the things she wants to discuss with us, things that she needs and the like. She's in a NH and we are trying to figure out the best way to give her back her list-making ability, preferably low tech--any great ideas out there?

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Wonderful suggestions, all. I will look into big pens, recording devices, et al. My wake up call came this morning when my wonderful sil emailed me "mom's upset that the speech lady is trying to get her to write". The thing I keep having to remind myself is "it's broken and you can't fix it". I'm a psychologist...I fix things for a living. This is a tough lesson in humility. Bless you all.
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Are her lists always the same items? As I was reading this, I thought of an exercise we had students do when I was a teacher. You could write the items she usually puts in her lists, even whole phrases, onto index cards. Then she can pull out the ones for that list. So if she makes a grocery list, have 50 or so cards (or more or less) with food items on them. She pulls out the ones she would write if she were writing and clips them together in order. Or attaches them onto a surface in a list format. You could put felt on the back and they would stick to a felt board. Maybe put flat magnet tape and attach to a metal board.

If the list is for chores or places to go or gift ideas or things to do, someone could make different card stacks for her for each category.

Not sure how practical this is but in a classroom, it was a great hands-on way for young children to learn.
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There are huge (and I mean HUGE) pens available. I've had many patients with neuropathy in their hands or stroke related issues use these pens. And when I say huge I mean that the diameter is about the size of a.....a......hmmm.....lemme think.....a hairbrush? Does that help? Well anyway, they're big and very helpful to the folks I've seen use them. Lightweight too. I've never seen them at Walmart, you might have to buy them online. Maybe they would help your mom write.
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My mom is having different health issues but basically the same problem. It took awhile to get her to take notes, but now that she's doing it, it's a huge mess. She writes down way too many things and then can't find anything.

My thought to you is that, with arthritis, hopefully your mom will learn to be short and to the point with her lists and that would help.

Right now, I'm not very far along with this with my own mom, but here are my own efforts, for what they're worth:
1. Mom keeps a calendar of all appointments and events. My thought to you is that you can get stickers. Your mom might be able to place stickers for some of the bits rather than writing, although placement might be tricky if her arthritis is bad.
2. My mom has a notebook that is a mess. I was thinking of several notebooks for several purposes. But I then realized I think I want to get her a notebook that has sections to it, so that each section can be for different things. I don't know if they come in anything but 8.5x11", though, and she likes her notebooks smaller than that so she can shove them in her purse. But that's my next thing. Maybe one section for things she wants to call relatives to talk about, another section for things she needs to buy, etc... And she's not good at crossing things off, so that's another thing to do.
3. I was planning to get her a whiteboard so she can easily track daily things. As she takes her medications for the day, she can put a mark on it, that kind of thing. If she eats, she can mark it on the board (she forgets to eat -- it freaks out both her and me, but that's how bad her memory has gotten, so this isn't as strange a plan as you might think).

To you, I would suggest considering a cheap recording device. Check them out someplace like Best Buy or Amazon and see if you can get one cheaply. I don't know the prices. Actually, I'm so cheap that I keep my old K-Mart tape recorder with a cassette tape, just for this kind of occasion.
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maybe an mpg recorder
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I really wish I had an answer for you, Ba8alou. All I can think of is how I wish I would have known of something like that when my mom was around.
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