I am still thinking about last week’s visit to my home city.  It was vascular dementia in the morning Alzheimer’s disease in the afternoon.  With my mum having the former and my brother the latter, my trip was a bit of a Busman’s Holiday from mixed dementia here.

I took my my sister in law for lunch  at a pub just down the road from my mum’s Care Home.  While we caught up with each other a familiar tale emerged over denial and disbelief in the early days.  It is something that we had both experienced: with other family members all putting different labels to our concerns about our loved ones.  Although we suspected dementia most of them were in denial until the diagnosis from a Consultant stared them in the face.

We moved on to see my bro and I don’t think he was aware of his company.  Slumped in a chair in one of the social areas of his Nursing Home, as chaos reigned around him. Most of the usual suspects were up to their normal antics.  Although it was obvious that a few more of them had become chair bound since my last visit.  Apparently, trudging the corridors is all that my bro has left of his independence: he can do little else without assistance.

I would liken my trip back home to something of a training course as it made me reflect on my approach to caring for my wife.  I talked to professional staff during my visit and picked up a few tips that might be helpful here.  Most of them were at some stage of a long shift but none of them are ever on duty 24/7.  They have breaks where others keep an eye on things.  It is always risky to take my eye off the ball here.  None of this is a complaint it is simply a fact: when you are on an endless hours contact with a marriage licence to boot.