Living well with dementia People can live well with dementia. However, their symptoms can vary from day to day. Understanding the symptoms and how to manage them so you can all live well on a daily basis is important.
When Jack needed to take a break, he made sure Mary was happy and comfortable, listening to the radio or watching the birds in the garden, something she enjoyed doing. He then took five minutes to make a cup of tea and read the paper.
26
How much a person with dementia understands about their symptoms and how they are progressing is completely individual. Some people have more insight than others, and it’s important to reflect on the variations that can occur, and if their symptoms are particularly challenging, feel they are being deliberately difficult. As Kerry Kleinbergen, a person who lives with the symptoms of dementia, said in a graphic she created to express how her diagnosis of dementia was affecting her life, ‘The person with dementia is not giving you a hard time. The person with dementia is having a hard time.’ Be mindful that as a person’s dementia symptoms progress, their levels of understanding or awareness may decline. As a close relative or carer, you may find yourself having to explain things to them that you hadn’t had to explain previously or help them with tasks that they used to do unaided. www.carechoices.co.uk/dementia
