My beloved MIL has certainly been harmed by COVID. She is in a stage of dementia of unknown origins. It's not typical Alzheimers but it is robbing her of more and more and the isolation has been cruel.

So we have tried to keep in touch by phone and by outside visits where we could. It's a bit like 50 first dates, where we have to tell her every time about the virus and she always says no one told her. She has unfortunately gotten to the point where using her iphone is dicey. She runs it down playing with it, has lost it a couple times in her apartment.

So around Thanksgiving I started looking into some alternative communication tools that I hoped would not require her to do anything. What I found was ViewClix, a 15" frame screen with camera and microphone that also displays a slideshow of photos (editable with captions to help her memory) , and can display sticky note messages to her at certain times you set up.

But the main thing is you can make cloud based video calls to her frame without her having to answer or charge or anything. The frame stays put and when you make a call to her it's like you just walked into the room and said hi. All administration is handled by me remotely and she cannot mess it up.

I've been setting it up, and we hope to work with her assisted living place to install it Wednesday.

The thing is really well thought out in terms of what less capable seniors need. $300 with no ongoing fees. If you have relatives or friends in that situation I highly recommend.

https://www.viewclix.com/features/#

I'll be interested in hearing how this works!

Me, too. No aging parents here, but I am still in touch with people at the place where my mom lived for the last three years of her life. They might be interested. They have been facilitating Facetime calls between residents and family, especially those in memory care.

There's a lot of stuff out there that can be very helpful. Needs change over time and the solutions need to evolve to meet them.

Your MIL is fortunate to have you to do the research and to try to improve her day to day life. A lot of families are overwhelmed by the technology.

The iPhone would be fine if we could be there to help her charge, help her find it.. but we can't yet, and to my distress we have heard nothing yet about when their staff and residents will be vaccinated.

My 91 year old Mom is pretty tech savy as long as she can type. She struggles with smart phones and tablets as her coordination isn't good enough to manage swiping etc or clicking on small screens. We are able to Zoom with her as long as we set it up and she logs on from her laptop with keyboard and mouse.

I will be watching to see how it goes for you, Mik. This might be something she would enjoy.

My inlaws have an ipad, but it is hit-and-miss for them to connect - they often lose icons and have trouble hitting the right places...

Dad is in memory care. We gave up on cell phones. iPhone kept getting lost or not charged, and could not answer a call.

Then got a flip phone. That was slightly better, but it got laundered.

So we just got him a landline with a big keypad that has a pic of every person he knows. Now he calls everyone to say good night by touching their face. It is familiar, can’t get lost, doesn’t need charging. Perfect.

Except when he forgets to call.

Fortunate, he has staff to arrange things like zoom calls.

Will be interested to here how it goes, Mik.

That is such a great idea. My parents aren’t in that stage quite yet, but I’m going to keep it in mind for friends who may need something similar.

On a related note, my mom has severe osteoporosis - bad enough that her spine spontaneously fractured earlier this year. My dad is rarely home (during non-pandemic times, anyway). He was away for a couple weeks this fall on a hunting trip and my mom told me she was nervous about falling somewhere in the house and not being able to get to her phone to call someone for help. A valid fear, for sure. She has an iPhone, but doesn’t carry it around the house with her. So we set her up with an Apple Watch. It has a great fall detection feature. If it detects a fall, it prompts you on the Watch to confirm you are okay. If you don’t respond to the (increasingly loud and persistent) audio and vibration warnings, it automatically calls 911 and your emergency contacts. If she falls but is conscious and doesn’t need 911, she can also make the call from her Watch, even without her phone near by. We all feel better knowing we have that in place for her.

Parents and parents in law all gone. I will say, based on history, nothing comes close to an in person visit, holding hands, .jf

That'd be swell, except that you can't be there.

Mary Anna uses a Facebook Portal to talk to some parts of her family. It seems to work well for her.

Sorry about your MIL's condition, MIK. We're watching a similar situation develop and it breaks my heart.

We took it to Indianapolis and installed it yesterday. It works very well, although I think it confuses her a bit just yet. She'll get used to it. I know she likes the slideshow.

One problem I had not anticipated - her hearing. She refuses to wear her hearing aids. Everyone else can hear it fine, but she cannot unless you are yelling. Fortunately there is an audio out jack so we can add an external speaker with audio control.

That's great. The slideshow is a great connection for her, especially since visits are probably pretty hard to set up. Around here all of the senior living facilities are pretty much on lockdown. Any visits are scheduled for a common area and are of short duration.

Something to consider....in people with memory loss, I believe that cognitive hiccups may masquerade as acoustic hearing loss. At least that's what I kind of figured out with my Mom.

She had some hearing loss and wore hearing aids. Despite that she used to crank the volume up on the TV. Thinking she was having trouble hearing, I would raise my voice when I talked to her, and she would ask me why I was yelling.

I came to believe that what seemed like simple hearing loss might actually related to a decline in cognitive skills. I think she had trouble understanding and focusing on what people on the TV were saying and would turn up the volume to compensate for it. My voice was familiar, and I would adjust the pace of my delivery so she could understand me; that obviously didn't happen on the TV.

Just something to consider as she adapts to the new device.

Yeah, I brought that same thing up yesterday but no one really wanted to hear it. I think her attention wanders. The nice thing about the slideshow is I can add new photos every day from here and they call can have captions. Her reading is still pretty good.