The Woman’s Owncolumnist has her say on dementia, Valentine’s and public peeing
DAWN NEESOM
MIND OF MY OWN
Those affected by dementia or Alzheimer’s have my sympathies
Help me! Please, help me!’ The croaky cry echoed down the long corridor, a voice full of fear. A skeletal arm waved and tried to grab at someone or something that no one else could see. Others locked in their own personal hells barely noticed. The clocks ticked on through the small hours; the hot, heavy air weighed down with the stench of despair and disinfectant. Dignity and hope had no place here.
Scene from a war zone? No, a long night spent caring for a loved one on a trolley in an NHS hospital emergency care corridor.
He was lucky, he had us. All around us stretched similar trolleys with lonely, lost souls reliving home movies of their own long-gone lives and times. This is the heart-wrenching reality for many elderly dementia patients who have no family or – even sadder – have family who either can’t or don’t care.
This is not to criticise the staff who were, to a man and woman, incredible. There were no ward beds available (a tale beginning to sound as old as time), so they were dealing with a never-ending conveyor belt of elderly, confused and scared patients who had mostly fallen.
Their cries were not being ignored, but (unlike a shocked me and my family) the nurses and orderlies knew they were simply unable to be soothed. There were no words to ease the internal terror of the man on the next trolley who pleaded to his own personal ghosts to ‘take me with you’. He did this for 13 hours.
His name was David and we wondered what his story was. What life had he lived? What had he done as a young man? Who had he loved and maybe lost? It’s easy for the young to dismiss the old, but they were young too once. And each one of the dementia sufferers in the hospital had lived a life and had stories to tell. Stories that will probably die with them though, as their ability to reveal their truths was being erased by one of the cruellest conditions known to mankind.
Thankfully, the man we were there for, while being in his 80s too, is still as pin-sharp as he once was, when he was a hard-working craftsman of precious metals. He used to ride motorbikes, was the proud dad of four sons and excelled in his hobby of making films.
Dementia is now the biggest killer in the UK; in 2022, it was responsible for 20.7% of all deaths. In England, it’s estimated around 676,000
