Dementia: Wrong Again!

On Thursday afternoon our doorbell rang as Maureen and I were in the middle of our daily siesta.  Half asleep I made it to the door, rather scantily clad, to see some relatives of Maureen’s who we hadn’t seen for a while.  They live about 50 miles away and pop over to Cleethorpes occasionally to visit relatives who live in the area.

Maureen is a few years younger than her Aunty Elsie – they used to play together when they were children.  Her husband Ron is a ‘cockney card’ who has a soft spot for Maureen.  They had not seen Maureen for a while and would not have been aware of the extent that dementia has progressed since their last visit.  On occasions I winced as they interacted with Maureen, as they seemed far from dementia friendly in their conversation.  At one stage Ron waxed lyrical about his use of an I Pad and implored Maureen to get one.

Maureen made few comments after the visit of her relatives until yesterday evening.   As we were about to go to sleep last night she mentioned that she was going to write to her mother to say how pleased she was that family had visited.  She wanted her mum to know that her youngest sister had popped in to check on how her daughter was doing.  It was clear I had made the classic error of focusing on the content of conversation, rather than the good feeling that came about from a visit from family members.

Tom Schuller made a helpful comment on my post yesterday; helping me to recognise that Performance Appraisal is the issue.  I aim to make an incremental start on Self-Appraisal by resurrecting ‘Looking Back: Looking Ahead’ as the focus for my Posts on Monday’s.   We had a good day yesterday with Maureen in great humour: she locked me in the house early evening and returned shortly afterwards laughing her head off!