Dementia: what we wish we'd known | Adele Doherty | TEDxStormontWomen

this is a photograph of my grandma and that taken in the Lebanon in 1963 Tom and Cass they were married forty nine years before granddad passed away they loved to travel and this is just one of many photographs that we have of them they loved to travel but they spent a large part of their traveling time looking for things grandma had a habit of taking the travel money the passports and the tickets and when they arrived she would put them somewhere safe and then at the end when it was time to go home they couldn't find the safe place so it was kind of a joke we all knew that they were going to have some kind of story about losing something after granddad passed away we all spent a lot more time with Grandma and in those years the next 1012 years we spent a lot of time looking for things we looked for her glasses and one day I was dispatched to her house to look for her teeth and we searched and searched for three hours looking for her teeth we looked in the toilet cistern we looked under mattresses we looked everywhere no teeth at lunch time she came in to me and said you silly fool I've got my teeth in and I looked at and I said well I didn't know that those were the teeth what we're looking for we were so used to looking for her teeth but to me to go and look for the teeth it was just ok I'll look for the teeth grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease two years before she passed away we didn't know that she had Alzheimer's disease and we'd spent a long time wondering or just you know getting frustrated and we have a lot of funny stories about that time but we also have a lot of sadness and a lot of guilt back in the mid 90s there was no internet and there was very few places to get information and there was a lot that we didn't know we didn't know that Alzheimer's disease is just a form of dementia and that there are hundreds of types of dementia we didn't know that it was common there's around 850,000 people in the UK at the moment with the diagnosis of dementia one in three people over the age of 65 will develop symptoms of dementia and while I'm talking today 240 people around the world will develop symptoms of dementia it's very common and we weren't alone we didn't know that grandma's mind maybe felt a bit like a bookshelf and her memories were being stored on those shelves her most recent memories were on the top shelf and those furthest away were on the bottom shelf when that bookshelf started to wobble the first books that fell off were the ones on the top shelf her most recent memories and the ones that everything she could remember from from when she was young and work were the ones on the bottom shelf when finally grandma's bookshelf completely collapsed possibly that's how her mind felt if we'd known that we would have known how to gear conversations to help her but since then I have had the pleasure of working with some amazing people who live with dementia carers and people living with a diagnosis and I've learned a lot about things that we could have done and today I want to share with you some of the small changes that you could make if you're working or helping somebody living with dementia so the first is don't keep asking do you remember do you remember what you had for breakfast do you remember what you bought at the shops do you remember who you saw at church if you asked me what I had for breakfast this morning or was a long time ago this has been a stressful day no I don't remember but if you ask me did you enjoy you poached eggs and toast this morning that's rings a bell actually yeah I did but you know if I didn't remember eating my poached eggs on toast it doesn't matter because I can engage in the conversation with you I can pretend a hot poached eggs on toast for breakfast and I don't have to feel quite so silly that I've forgotten the second is to try not to contradict or always be right we all love to be right and there's nothing more frustrating than knowing that you're right and you can't say you know I told you that ten minutes ago no you do know that but all that does is cause frustration for you and it causes frustration and anxiety for the person that you're talking to maybe if the conversations getting stressful think about that bottom shelf and think about something that you can talk about that you'll both agree on that's a nice happy memory that can make the time that you're spending with the person a little bit more enjoyable than arguing about something that you're not gonna be right even though you know you right the third is stepping into somebody's reality somebody recently told me a friend of mine who is living at the moment with dementia and he said when he crosses the bridge it's easier sometimes for the people around him to cross the bridge with him rather than him him having to go back over the bridge if I just give you an example of that my grandma had a budgie after granddad passed away we got her a budgie and she called him Tommy after Tom she loved that would G and he followed her around and he sat on her head most days when everywhere with her Tommy died and in those years grandma found herself a little purple furry bird and it wasn't real it was a soft toy but she thought that this was Tommy and this Tommy came everywhere with her and I remember once I said to her but grandma that's not Tommy that's a furry toy and she was really upset by that because she didn't realize at that moment that Tommy had died and they bird this very toy wasn't Tommy I felt really bad about that I knew then just to go along with it that the very bird was Tommy and grandma was happy with that the fourth is to take time take time to be aware Northern Ireland twenty thousand people living with dementia at the moment and is working very hard to become a dementia friendly community a dementia friendly community is just a friendlier community friendlier for us all it's a community where we take time with each other we're patient and we're aware of what it means to have dementia take time to for yourself if you're worried about your own memory afford yourself that time so that you can make some plans take time take 30 seconds in the supermarket with somebody that's maybe a little bit disorientated and even if they don't have dementia and you've helped them out you've done a nice thing anyway or take 30 minutes with that neighbor who since their diagnosis of dementia feels isolated and it's the main thing that they feared from getting that diagnosis is that loneliness and isolation so take time to learn something from their bottom shelf there is no cure for dementia but it's in our future by the time I'm 85 myself or the person next to me will have dementia so we have to prepare ourselves for the future and by doing that we can make life easier for everybody that's living with dementia theatres carer or an individual I don't have any more time with my grandma I wished I did I would have enjoyed looking for things with her and I would have cherished looking for things like her teeth thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 20,947

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United Kingdom, Health, Medicine, Memory, Mental health, Public health, Social Change, Society

Id: dlWsq85HaiU

Length: 8min 42sec (522 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2016