Great granddad speaks out about living with dementia
March 19th 2010 23:20
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From:Warrington Guardian
Forgetting names, birthdays, dates and even the name of the odd grandchild is generally accepted as something that happens as we get older.
These signs, however, can give warnings about the onset of dementia, a brain condition faced by more than 70,000 people in the north west which can lead to severe memory loss, difficulty with speech and an inability to read or write.
Department of Health experts believe that most people will be touched by dementia at some point in their lives but statistics show that 53 per cent of people do not know enough about the disease to help someone who has it and 32 per cent would avoid people with dementia, indicating the condition is not understood.
But with estimates showing that one million people will have dementia in 20 years, it could be time to wise-up about the disease which can affect anyone.
Dennis Parkin-Bowes was only 58 when he developed vascular dementia following a stroke in 1996. His wife Maureen awoke to find that her husband could not speak or walk and was suddenly ‘not the man I married any more’.
Lymm resident Maureen, aged 69, admits that before their 17-year battle against dementia the couple, who have been married for 52 years, knew nothing about the condition.
“I thought it was something that happened to old people where they got a bit confused,” she said.
“But Dennis went from being the man of the house to me nursing him on a daily basis.
“It was very frightening and I realised I knew nothing about it.”
Life for Dennis had suddenly changed. From a career in diesel engineering and being head of the family, he could not even remember the alphabet.
Great granddad Dennis, aged 74, said: “I just remember one morning I couldn’t read a magazine and I felt like a child.
“Then I was re-learning the alphabet but by the time I got to the second letter I couldn’t remember the first one.”
Maureen and Dennis, who live on Moston Grove, relied on a support network including social workers, psychiatrists, the Alzheimer’s Society and Woodleigh Care Home, on Callands Road, where a weekly visit every Wednesday provides a break for Maureen.
She admits that to friends and family the condition proved ‘hard to accept’ but was keen to impress how many positive things there were to take out of Dennis’s illness.
“People are very scared of dementia but they should understand that you can still laugh and focus on the good side of people,” she said.
“We’re very happy and in a way this has been a blessing in disguise – it’s given me time to find out things about Dennis that we didn’t share before in all the years we’ve been married.
“It has also taught us both great values and we found qualities we didn’t even know we had.”
Dennis himself has coped admirably with the drastic change and said: “I’m not sick, my body’s not sick – everybody else is sick not me.
“I forget things and am wary in strange places but I don’t feel bad at all.
“I like doing my own things and just having fun.”
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