Health and Wellbeing Living with Dementia
Live and Laugh with Dementia
It challenges one to understand dementia and what it does to a person.
It challenges one to look at self and ask questions. What is this doing to me? Why am I reacting this way? How can this be positive for my loved one, me, and those around us? What needs to happen to achieve a positive outcome?
It challenges one to think of other ways, creative ways, of engaging, and communicating with the loved one.
It challenges one to understand that where once parents were the carers of the child, dementia can lead to the child becoming the carer.
I am a child who became a carer to my father, and in the same breath, the carer of a child — my father.
A role that demands laughter, and taught me so much about dementia, my father, my family, me, and a four letter word Father valued — kind.
Rolling back the years
He stared out the window. I wondered if Father was thinking of his days growing up on Palmerston Atoll. He often did that. I heard the familiar sound of his fingers tapping on the arm-rest of his lazyboy, tapping the beat to our drum dance. Yes, he was thinking of home.
