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Transcription
The speaker discusses his mother's experience with dementia. She was diagnosed just before her death at the age of 82. Despite being aware that something was wrong, she resisted receiving care. When taken to the doctor for a special test, she seemed to fake her responses. This was likely a way to avoid getting care. The speaker believes that if they could go back, they would have tried to connect her to her past and open up about her memories. This would have been a comforting experience for both her and her family. Hi guys, I'm joined by my dad and today we're going to be talking about his experiences of his mother's dementia. So when did Marion actually get diagnosed with dementia? Marion was diagnosed with dementia just before she died actually, when she was nearly 82. She wasn't responding well to us being there and because we started looking for exterior care, actually a lot of her sort of latent memories of her childhood kept on coming up at that time. She kept on talking about when she was a child and she came from a very poor background on the west coast of Scotland and she really didn't want to have to change her lifestyle even though she was sort of aware that something was wrong. To try and get care for my mum, we realised we had to get her properly diagnosed by the doctor. So we took her to the doctor and he did a special test that they do for this thing. And ironically, my mum was really on the answers but wasn't really very sharp and the doctor knew that she was kind of sort of faking it and my mum kind of enjoyed that side of it because she hated going to the doctor. What do you mean faking it? We presumed that she would fail the test terribly, do you know what I mean, because of all the stuff that we'd seen her do in the house. But actually when it came to some of these things which were almost more like crossword clues, she was really quite good at it. And so she sort of failed the test but not in the same way that we thought she'd fail the test. Do you think that that was her trying to avoid having care or do you think that that was just a sort of protest? It was both a protest and a way to avoid having care. She was definitely trying not to have care. So she was aware that you were trying to give her care? Absolutely, 100%. This is an abstract question, but do you think her illness created any forms of opportunity for her in relation to death or life? This is an abstract answer to an abstract question, but it turned out that when my mum had dementia, it turned out that we realised that she'd forged her passport and forged her birth certificate and she was actually five years older than she said she was. And some of the reality, the truth from her younger years, which is what people tend to hold onto I think in dementia, started to kind of come out and she talked a little bit about this. So weirdly we started to learn about who she really was after she had dementia when really she'd been lying and covering up that her whole life. There's often a perception with dementia patients that they've lost their sense of self. Do you think if you could redo Care for My Own, you'd do it any differently? I think if I could go back in time to when we realised that she had dementia, I think we would have tried to force her, it's probably not the right word, but take her into almost to a world where she used to come from, take her back to where she used to be from because she was very secretive about that for all sorts of reasons. And I think that would have helped open up her as a person and talk a little bit about her memories and who she was and I think that would have ultimately been a cathartic, comforting experience, not just for her but also for me and my brother. Thank you Dad for joining me here today.
