Dementia.... having someone taken away from you while there are still physically with you.

The onset of dementia upon someone you love and care for takes you onto a journey that asks more and more of you as time passes by. Time does not give you respite from the relentless advance of dementia. It may give you understanding of what your love ones are going through and maybe a stoic acceptance of what you will be facing in the years ahead. Only love will be your friend and comfort as you see dementia take your love one away from you with each passing day. Only with love can you cope with the reality of having someone taken away from you while there are still physically with you.

It has been over two years since my wife was diagnosed with Frontal Lobe Dementia - that dementia that takes away your ability to tell your physical body and your mind to be the person you once were. Imagine being a witness to someone who starts to disintegrate before your very eyes and imagine, if you can,  that it is someone you loved most in life.

How many of you have looked at that someone and ask yourself what would you do if that person changed?

I still remember waiting for my wife to finish work at Selfridges from our London days in the 1960's just after we were married. Those were happy times filled with the exuberance of a just married couple still oblivious of what life would bring. The cold of the London Winter was not felt. The hustle and bustle of London we ignored to hurry back to our flat at Acton to get dinner ready and to spend time with each other.

Today we are still together but how times have changed people. Not always for the better but certainly more wiser and more accepting of things that we cannot change...dementia for one!

It is now just past 5 on a Tuesday morning. My wife is awake in bed but she is in her own world. She knows I am in the room with her but I do not know if she knows who I am. She holds my hand, looks at me and at times smiles when I smile at her but she is in her own world. I cannot enter that world. I can only be there with her and hope that she knows I am there. But that is enough for me to be happy knowing that she is not angry, sad or troubled by anything - be it pain or stress and neither is she in need for anything. We take care of all that.  I like to remind her when she is receptive that she sits there like King Farouk while I and my son willingly attend to her every needs....and when I do she will look at me intently and say nothing. Maybe sometimes there is a smile...more a smile of indulgence at my attempts to connect with her than a smile that understands what I have just said.

I have stopped wondering what she is thinking about. Stop asking myself if she is happy or sad because most times words simply confuses her. What matters is that she is comfortable and that we are around her to keep her company and tend to her needs. That is why we want her home with us - not in an aged care facilities where strangers looks after her needs. 

Who would be patient enough to sit beside her throughout every meals that she has? Who would bother if the TV program that she is watching is to her liking? Who cares if her feet are cold and that she needs to be moved every couple of hours to keep her blood in circulation to keep her well? I do and my son does.....not only because we care but we are family - and family takes care of each other. Please, for those of you who have loved ones in need of 24/7 care, be sure that you have family around them all the time. Only then can you be sure that they are well looked after.

I do not know what the future holds. My greatest fear is that I too will eventually need 24/7 care and be unable to assist my son in caring for his mother, my wife. That thought haunts me often for I know that for all of us, that time will come when age catches up with everyone of us. 

Remember that....age catches up with everyone of us....and when it does the only thing that can make our quality of life decent is the care our loved ones will give us...I know....I am living it now.  

That and the help of friends.