David Sheard has prevented me from making a real bloomer on Friday with my planned Pilgrimage To Paddington.  His assertion that feelings matter most has caused me to change my plans in a positive direction.

I shudder to think how Maureen would have felt if I had excluded from meeting Tom Schuller and Irving Kirsch on Friday:  two people who have had such a significant impact on our lives.

We were work colleagues when I did my Masters Degree under Tom’s stewardship, thirty years ago.  More recently,  his suggestion that music therapy might be beneficial has transformed our lives.

Irving’s research has helped us both to see that the ‘chemical imbalance’ explanation for depression is a fallacy and antidepressants are not automatically the panacea.  Maureen rejected antidepressants when they were offered by Mental Heath Nurses from the Memory Service shortly after her stroke. However, a Senior Manager from the same department did us a real favour a short while ago when he alerted me to the work of David Sheard.

I have now booked a chauffeur to take us both to London on Friday and made the arrangements more dementia friendly.  We will now avoid Central London by picking Irving up in Reading and meeting Tom in Ealing.  A gradual introduction to two new faces, who are both Professors will hopefully minimise the potential for distress.

An added bonus of our plans is that our chauffeur is familiar with dementia as his mother has the condition!

Footnote: Click <HERE> for my weekly cognitive stimulation summary.