Dementia and what it means to me the carer

It has been a couple of years since I wrote on this blog, and a lot has happened, but mainly it revolves around the wife, I have over the years written two books, one about my life in Malta, and one about a holiday in Malta, both books told the story of love and romance about Mike and Nann, and one about Mike and Anna, and to be honest the people involved are myself and my wife Maureen who I have been married to for over 30 years, but I wanted to tell two very difference stories about my life in Malta, and my holidays in Malta after leaving the Royal Navy.

Both books were hand written then after some encouragement I was asked to start a blog and write both books, which I did, but to be honest nobody read the books or even looked at my blog, so I sort of gave up on this and worked on other things.

Last year, I noticed a big change in Maureen's attitude towards the things we were doing, she was forgetting things, she was trying to talk to me and could not find the words needed, so I got her checked out and after a doctors appointment and a full memory test we were told that she had second stage dementia. This is NOT a disease, it cannot be caught by others, it is a condition, the brain is a complex organ that stores hundreds of thousands of thoughts from the time you are born until the time you die.

 Most of these thoughts remain in your head, and even though you get older, you still remember how to wash, dress work around the home, like washing, washing up, cleaning and cooking. But if you need to shop, the chances you will forget to buy some things, even writing a list can cause you problems. so you come to rely on those around you.

Maureen was asked to do a scan, she was very upset about it, having heard some crazy stories, even to the thoughts that they might open her scull to look inside, we had a lot of tears right up until the day of the scan and on the day, it took a lot of love and encouragement to get Maureen into the room.

The scan went well, in fact from the time she was on the machine, to the time it was over was no more than three minutes, and once we were out, she was full of smiles, we sat in the car and and got our breath back.

Going back to how things were, we both went though HELL during the pandemic, we had no transport, so that once we were able to get out it was a case of taking a taxi into town to shop and a taxi home, £20 a week, everything else was a walk, but we stayed in our flat for 6 days out of 7, then last March, April Maureen received a letter from the pension people saying they had under paid her pension wise and they wanted to sort it out and send her what was owed to her. I thought it was a scam, and rang the number on the letter, and it was no scam, they told me that Maureen would be getting a lump sum of £2303, over the years we had had major problems with our private lives, I lost my job six month before I was due to retire and was put on pension credit, but with the wife's pension and my naval pension this came out at £17 a week and I had to wait for 13 weeks before getting any money. Barclay's Bank blocked our account so that even the wife's pension could not be taken from the bank, we were in a grave situation, I was in tears, I did have a Britannia account and went across the road to see them.

Within a few minutes our pensions were transferred and we now had money in the bank. But we then told by The Woolwich that unless we upped our mortgage to £700 a month we would lose the flat, but with that we were lucky, someone heard our plight and bought the flat allowing us to carry on living there for a rent of£400, this would never go up, and if we got the money to but the flat back then we could do. so by the June and my old age pension going into the bank, we were a little better off, but with no transport we still had to use taxi's and public transport.

With Maureen getting this money she decided that we should use it for a car, not a big car, there was only the two of us, so as long as it had two seats, then that would be enough. Plus the fact during the pandemic we only spent money on food which we had delivered weekly, so the bank account was building substantially.

We were looking for a two seater car that would do us for getting out, take a weeks shopping and take us on holiday. whilst trolling through Autotrader we came to Smart Cars, and realised that this type of car would be great for us, we saw one for £3000, it did have a high mileage, but it would be M.O.Td and serviced, it arrived on a low loader and parked up in our old parking space, I taxed and insured it and Maureen and I took it for a drive, I had not driven for a long time, but I was use to driving 40 ton trucks so was not that worried. As I sat in the driving seat I decided to take Maureen to Tesco's, this would mean going left all the time except for one round about going right. by the time I was driving along Silk Mills road, everything came flooding back, the nerves were gone and I felt as if I had never been of the road. And Maureen just loved it, I have never seen her so happy as she was sat in the passenger seat. we went everywhere locally, we even went up to my sisters at Elsmere Port for a few days. but it was while we were there that my sister realised something was a miss with Maureen, it took 6 weeks to get her to the doctor then the memory test then the scan, then the diagnosis, Maureen was then put on some tablets to so they said to help slow the dementia down, but to be honest, they failed to work, in fact they made matters a lot worse, she went from her old self to a woman who became ill with tummy upsets, sickness and staying in bed refusing to eat, then on the Sunday, we got the anger, as I say, Maureen and I have been together for over 30 years, and if there was any sign of an argument, Maureen would walk away, she did not want to know. But this Sunday she was ready for a fight, in fact she was ready for world war three, and I was the enemy, as I said to the memory nurse, if she had had a baseball bat in her hands, I would have had it across my scull. I removed myself into the lounge, ten minutes later Maureen was fully dressed, shoes outdoor coat demanding I take her out in the car, so I took her to Minehead, and all the way there all you could see over her head was this huge black cloud, she didn't even speak, I parked up on the sea front and asked her if she would like a cup of tea. I came back to the car and handed her the tea, it was then that she spoke to me. " I'm sorry Mike, I don't know what came over me "