I was on a training course today which was all about dementia. I am not totally ignorant about the subject, but I soon realised that I was far more ignorant than I realised. Of the attendees, one person left right at the start, barely a moment after the introductions had been completed. I don’t know why – no one asked – but now, back at home, I can see why. I’m mentally drained and physically tired. It’s been a very long day.
Something like a third of us will end our days with some form of dementia. Of that third, the disease will only occur with many of us near the end of life. For the others – and there are many and there will be many more – it will be a long and very rocky road into a tragically uncertain future.
I stopped laughing at dementia “jokes” some years ago once I realised there was nothing remotely funny about the subject. I grew up when people were apparently losing their marbles, becoming senile and suffering from memory loss. These things, especially memory loss, happened to older people. I don’t recall people going into “care”. They remained at home, shouting at the moon, screaming, crying, wanting to fight, getting lost and forgetting people they knew and even themselves. I had no idea what dementia was, what Alzheimers was. I know now.
The word incurable holds many fears, for there is no cure for dementia. If diagnosed early enough, it can be slowed, but not cured. Circumstances and timings vary, the end result doesn’t.
I learned how the memory goes, short memory first, and then eyesight and other senses. Touch is the sense that lasts longest. We did not get into morality, of lethal injections, of going to Switzerland; just dealing with, helping people to live with, this awful disease.
As the ageing population grows, to the disease will grow. Science battles on to find cures, but none is close at hand. People who work all their lives still lose everything, their contribution throughout a working life ignored, and the children see their parents live a harrowing life and die a horrible death, their inheritance stolen by dementia.
And still society has no real strategy to deal with the coming epidemic of dementia. Local government spending on care is about to be decimated, the national government once re-elected in May immediately shelved any plans to stop people losing everything once they went into care, breaking yet another solemn election promise, until at least 2020 when this generation of sufferers could be dead and they hope the rest of us will just forget about it. Where are the major projects with pharmaceutical companies and charities, alongside government? Do we just wait and hope that something simply turns up? Don’t we deserve something better than that?
Dementia, the disease we all dread. We don’t know how it will work out, whether we will be unlucky. We know there are some genetic aspects, but we don’t know for certain. But with 850,000 known cases in the UK and many, many thousands still undiagnosed, action cannot be delayed much longer. My view is that there should now be no further delay at all.
