Dementia patients

vary as widely in their behaviour as anyone else. 

"Oh, it's what they would really be like if there wasn't that social veneer," I was told yesterday.

That's nonsense. I have known too many people with dementia to believe that. 

There was O... a lovely, gentle, kind man who became so confused and angry that he had to be given medication to calm him. He had no idea who he was or where he was. That he would have been like that apart from "good manners" was nonsense.

There was C... whose dementia was brought on by a brain injury. He had a doctorate in one of the physical sciences. One of his pleasures had been bush walking. Prior to his brain injury he would help to find people lost in the bush. When dementia set in he would wander the streets and become lost himself. Knowing who he was local people would guide him home but have to be careful how they did it because he would lash out at the merest provocation. More than once I had to pretend that he was taking me home rather than the opposite way around.

There is K..., the Senior Cat's oldest friend. K... is now so confused that he asks his wife things like, "Who am I sleeping with tonight?" He has been married to her for over sixty years and never slept away from her apart from trips to hospital. Before dementia set in he would not even asked the question as a joke. He's still a gentleman even if he can't remember something he was asked to do from one side of the room to the other.

There is M... who lives in the same residence as the Senior Cat. She spends her days wandering the building. People have to be constantly on the watch that she doesn't escape. It is not really the right place for her to be but there has been no success in getting her into a unit intended for dementia patients. Two days ago she tried to tell me to get into bed. Perhaps it was a left over from her days as a hospital matron. She was very insistent and becoming quite agitated. I lay down on the Senior Cat's bed for a moment. It seemed to satisfy her and she wandered off. When I left one of the staff was trying to get her to have something to drink. She was behaving like a toddler at that point and she looked at me as if she had never seen me before.  The staff tell me that "bossy" is her more normal way of behaving.

I am not convinced by the "social veneer" idea. Yes, people change. It is likely that all sorts of things can cause us to be less patient or less polite when we grow old and frail and downright frustrated. 

The Senior Cat can be forgetful and, if he mishears something, he can get confused but he is still very polite and thoughtful of others. He doesn't bother the staff unnecessarily. He watches people like M... and tries to be tolerant of them. He can still enjoy a one-on-one conversation about many things. I know we are lucky. I sometimes wonder, especially when he is so concerned about K..., how he would be if he had dementia. 

It seems to me we know very little about dementia...and people with dementia can't tell us what it is like.