The stark realities of dementia have just been brought home to me as M woke from our afternoon siesta.  It is almost as though she has to reboot until she has some grasp of where she is in her life’s journey.

M woke at 4 pm in the afternoon and she believes it is first thing in the morning.  She mentions it is a lovely day and how quiet it is.  On offering her a drink she mentions that the first cup of tea of the day is always the best.  Her conversation then moves to the prospect of breakfast.

As we talk she converses with me in the third person.  She mentions things I have in common with her P.  Like me her prefers drinking chocolate to tea.  M seeks information from me as she has little in her memory about the sort of person I am and my interests.  Sometimes she suggests I am a manger of this ‘Care Home’.

We then move on to where we are geographically: this is not home.  M talks of Coventry and the benefit of living in a Close and walking her children to school with other residents in the area.  She then acknowledges that when you are surrounded with the older generation it is not as easy to make friends.  On occasions she will complain that she has been here too long and is well enough to go home.  Although we have lived her for 15 years now she often says she has not been here long enough to find her way around the immediate area.

Some talk of dementia as ‘time travelling’ where the sufferer moves around phases in their life.  They suggest that wanting to go ‘home’ is a metaphor for all manner of anxieties.  In my view put simply it is wanting to go back to a time in your life before dementia robbed you of capacity.

Complacency:  It’s so easy to forget really important things in the busy life of a 24/7 carer.  I did not check that  M has not taken her blood pressure medication this morning; it is till in the egg cup that we use as her medication dispenser.  The problem now is that as she thinks it is morning she does not realise she is late with her medication.  It seems likely that she will be reluctant to take her blood thinner (normally taken at tea time) later today.  There is no time to take your ‘eye off the ball’ in this game.