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The help that is available is tremendous in every way.

I feel weary today, as I do most days. Being tired seems to be the norm, having both knees replaced and both hips replaced, as well as having both my shoulders fixed, in the last six years. Plus, I’ve had three other operations on my spine. They all, as you can imagine, take their toll. I have asthma and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), so I've had to come to terms with the physical side of my body being knackered, and it came as a bombshell when my brain wasn’t working as well as it should. That was a bummer, a bit devastating I can tell you.

It would have been so easy to have gone into a deep depression, as I am sure that some people feel and some people do, but I didn’t, and that was all down to my wife Margaret. Had it not been for her, who is always with me . . . she looked at the positives at what we had. Saying “Rght, nothing we can do about the diagnosis – so let’s just get on with it, let’s see what help we  can get”, which we did, together. The help that is available is tremendous in every way. There are pop-up dementia cafes all over the place, with new ones being set up frequently, and it is well worth the visit to meet people, who have the same diagnosis and have similar problems, who may give you some tips about coping with your diagnosis that perhaps you hadn’t thought of. 

Once the profession help came I was hooked. I saw the unbelievable benefit of information in tackling dementia, and that was the underlying message from all the dementia diarists. The message for newly diagnosed people is, in the words Corporal Jones, “Don’t panic! There is help. Tere is information, and there are dozens of caring people.”

An audio version of this blog can be accessed at: https://soundcloud.com/dementia-diaries/steve-4-nottingham-uni