The best kind of treads are those where the edges are clearly marked, particularly in yellow, as is often the case with outdoor staircases. When I was working I was as guilty as anybody of wishing for the weekend, wishing for the next holiday, wishing for the end of the shift, but dementia has taught me to appreciate now and to actually stop and look around… you see far more beauty than if you just dash around here and there. A 2018 Japanese study found that as a cue for recollection in the elderly population, retrieving a memory through olfactory stimulus can be more effective than through conversation alone, and that this could improve mental health more generally. My Mum has dementia, and was diagnosed way too late, partly because of the stigma around the illness, and partly because the early signs (which I can see now with the wonderful thing the hindsight is) were completely dismissed and attributed to her quirky personality.

It also very easy to treat people with dementia liken they are incompetent children and that isn't right. When her adult daughters wear black clothes "all I see are heads walking round the room because there's a void where the black exists". Whereas her previous work was a straightforward memoir, this has more of a teaching focus, going point by point through the major changes dementia causes to the senses, relationships, communication, one’s reaction to one’s environment, emotions, and attitudes. Este livro não é um manual de diagnóstico, é uma fonte útil de informação baseada na experiência pessoal e na evidência científica. Her book, which she wrote with the help of Anna Wharton and which includes the comments of friends who also live with dementia, is a compilation of these strategies: a kind of how-to manual for people with the condition and those who support them.Thankfully, her disease has progressed slowly: Mitchell is still able to live independently in a village in East Yorkshire, with help from her daughters, Sarah and Gemma, who live close by. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs.

She notes that it’s important for people to live in the moment and continue finding activities that promote a flow state, a contrast to some days that pass in a brain haze. What I Wish People Knew About Dementia, which Wendy also wrote in collaboration with Anna Wharton, has made a similar splash. It seemed incredible to me that someone with dementia would be capable of writing a book but I felt my attitude needed to be adjusted by reading it.When Wendy Mitchell was diagnosed with young-onset dementia at the age of fifty-eight, her brain was overwhelmed with images of the last stages of the disease – those familiar tropes, shortcuts and cliches that we are fed by the media, or even our own health professionals.

This book follows on from Wendy Mitchell’s bestselling memoir Somebody I Used to Know (2018), where she described being diagnosed, aged 58, with young-onset Alzheimer’s. But her ability to type has not been affected at all, the tangles and plaques have not reached that part of her brain, so she communicates as well as she ever did.The vet said Billy has to lose weight; he must be getting fed somewhere else because his diet isn’t working.