John and Mary
It took some time for John to be diagnosed. At first, he was prescribed antidepressants. During the pandemic he went back to the doctor about this memory problems and was eventually diagnosed with dementia and prescribed Donepezil.
John, aged 83, is a retired Community Psychiatric Nurse. He likes to do jobs around the house and garden but finds he needs more prompting these days. John and his wife, Mary like to go for days out and enjoy a meal in a good restaurant.
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At first, John was diagnosed with depression. After a few years he and his wife thought his memory was getting worse so they contacted the doctor again. But this was during the pandemic and he went to the clinic but had to be assessed on a video call.
When he received his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, John was told he could no longer drive. John finds living with dementia difficult because he doesn’t always know what he has forgotten so feels bad when he is reminded that he has done something wrong.
If jobs are pointed out to John, he can get on with household chores.
If jobs are pointed out to John, he can get on with household chores.
I’m just trying to get a picture of, you know, what your kind of, your normal day, your normal week sort of entails really.
I’m going to say this, right, I’m waiting to, really to be told what to do is; that puts it in a nutshell doesn’t it? You, prompt me, this needs doing or that needs doing, or if I see you putting your boots on I know, I know I need to go in the garden and do that.
OK, all right, well that makes sense. So, I mean you’re, you’re happy to do things but you, you feel like you just need a nudge?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m fairly competent in the things that I do now aren’t I, aren’t I?
Totally domestic me, totally domesticated I am.
Brilliant.
Though I, though I, I don’t do the ironing.
Okay.
I peg the washing out and bring it in and things like that.
And do you like to cook?
I do, I do the cooking and, the laborious things that need to be done. Mary does the laundry, amongst other things.
John is troubled by his memory problems.
John is troubled by his memory problems.
So, are you able to sort of tell me what it was about your kind of memory that made you think oh actually this is, you know I need some, need to see someone about this, your; did you go to see your GP yourself?
I can’t, I don’t know, I can’t tell you that because I can’t fit it into anything, it was just; I can’t say there was a sudden awareness that I, like “I don’t know that”, like I’m saying now, I can’t say that. It, it didn’t really come out until well aft, after, well after retirement, did it?
Believe me, you don’t know you’ve got memory problems, you don’t know that you’ve missed something out, you don’t know that you’ve just done something three times before, like you don’t know that you put that in there because you can’t bloody find it anywhere, you just don’t know it happens, it’s, it’s; and when, when the afternoon comes down and before you know where you are it’s dark and so what happens, see this is what happens.
You don’t…this is what happened at [support group] the other day [crying].
You don’t know what, that you’ve, that you’ve done something that you shouldn’t have done because you don’t know what happened in the first place.
There are lots of things that I do, do because I know that it should be done and it shouldn’t be left undone, like the bloody postman keeps leaving the gate unlocked [laughs] silly things like that. It [sighs] it’s difficult trying to explain it. It’s, it just, it just happens and you just do it and then you don’t know, you don’t know you’ve done it so you go back to do something and you, “oh where’s it gone?”