A Dark Side

I have pondered through this Dementia Awareness Week, quite a lot. I have thought about the past when people just went 'doolally' or 'senile' and the old asylums that I come across in my work....

People are 'sectioned' nowadays.

What is that?

Until you enter this weird world, you have no interest in these things, they concern other people not you. Mad Criminals are sectioned and locked away, not little old Grannies and Grandads, aren't they?

I have come across a website that I have used a lot in the last few months. It is the Alzheimer's Society Talking Point Forum. It has been, and still is,  a lifeline to me. There are people posting on there who are so much more knowledgeable than I will ever be.

There are also people posting on there, reaching out as for a lifeline, who are dealing with things far worse than many of us, and deeply out of their depth, and what is more so, profoundly unhappy.

I have always thought that running a country is like running a family home, only on a bigger scale - OK, so I don't have a dis functional railway running through the kitchen, but most people have a car or two to keep running.

In our home, as most, we know how to treat a headache or a cut knee or take a temperature. We have an over view of what is going on. If one of our family is ill, we treat them,  but we know when we are out of our depth, and we then go to the doctors.

Running a country should be the same. It is no use patting us on the back and saying 'There, there, you will not miss your State Pension if you can't draw it for another 7 years'

Those in charge of social services should be required to read and discuss some of the posts I see daily on the Alzheimer's Talking Point Forum, and then maybe they will then realise what a soul destroying task caring for someone with dementia is - and I mean soul destroying in the sense that this awful disease has two victims every time. The patient and the carer.

No member of the public should have to acquire the expertise to needed to search around for a suitable care home for their relative, and worry endlessly when said relative becomes violent - yes, this happens with some dementia sufferers. If your PWD is sectioned that brings a whole new lower level to this ballgame.

One can walk down the street and appear to be 'normal' but inside you are breaking, because you truly live in a different world when your loved one is sectioned.

There is a word...... heartbreaking...... think about this word, and what it means.

In the 21st century there are two plagues - just like the Black Death of times gone by. Cancer and Dementia - the evil twins.

It is absolutely paramount that Governments pour funding into research and support for those affected...

I could be cynical and say that perhaps it is viewed by the men in grey suits as a natural population control....

Let's hope for a more cheerful post tomorrow !!!!