Many of us tend to think that dementia mostly affects short-term memory. It can also affect a person’s mood, personality, behaviour, perception, balance and even spatial awareness. A person with dementia may have to work much harder to perform daily tasks, process what they hear and formulate a response.
A person’s behaviour can be significantly affected. They may say or do things that seem inappropriate or hurtful. It can be very hard to cope with, especially when you’re doing your best to care for that person. But it’s important to remember it’s usually the disease talking.
Nothing can be harder than seeing your loved one (in my case my late Dad) morph from being a highly articulate, intelligent, cultured, loving parent with an amazing sense of humour into an angry, suspicious, impatient and frankly unrecognizable person. Anything that can be done to help carers to cope with this horribly difficult task, and that can provide insight into how and why it’s happening to them and how we can help, would be a wonderful gift to many people in much need.