Soraya
Soraya lives with other conditions which affect her daily life, including diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. She has noticed increasing memory problems and ‘brain fog’ but has not yet asked for help from her doctor.
Soraya is aged 57 and is a carer. She enjoys spending time with her family but also values occasional time alone. She especially enjoys walking and time to clear her busy mind.
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Soraya finds she is too anxious to socialise but her church is important for her wellbeing.
Soraya finds she is too anxious to socialise but her church is important for her wellbeing.
I go to a Benedictine Monastery; sounds all lovely, doesn’t it?
It does.
It’s [laughs] so I, they do everything in Gregorian, it’s very beautiful, I can go to Compline and Vespers if I want to, but I’ve been going for six years and I don’t know a single person [laughs].
OK, that was my next question.
Community [laughs] no. But I think, to be fair to them, it’s me. I want to go to Mass, I want to come home, I haven’t got it in me to have coffee and socialise. And there’s only little old ladies to socialise with anyway, which are very sweet, and the monks are sort of quite, they’re all quite lovely, but I don’t know what to say to them. I don’t know what [laughs] I just- so that’s it I’ve lost my social skills. I literally sweat. So, they say, “Ooh, are you going to come for coffee?” And they, somehow, they’ve collared me and I am literally sweating; I don’t have coffee with anyone at the moment [laughs].
Soraya feels frustrated when she loses things.
Soraya feels frustrated when she loses things.
And it was so frustrating because I felt like I was chasing my tail all through the day. Then the worst concerns started to, things that started to really bother me was I’d have friends that would just pop in and I intro, I introduced my friend, long friends that have been friends a very long time, and I went to introduce them and I’d forgotten their name [laughs].
And then not retaining absolutely anything. I love, I remember watching, I love watching YouTube and every, loads of subjects, and I remember thinking oh this is so interesting, but then when I tried to think about what I’d, when I tried to voice what I’d heard to people I couldn’t, I couldn’t remember a thing.
Soraya doesn’t want to know yet exactly what is causing her memory problems.
Soraya doesn’t want to know yet exactly what is causing her memory problems.
I think I won’t give into it until I really, really have to. And it may not be Alzheimer’s, it may not be dementia – it could be, it could be just accumulative, just masses of stress, it could be my diabetes, but I am a coward when it comes to the mind things, yeah.