Rolling Back The Years”  Guest blog Andy Tremlett

http://www.rbtyears.co.uk/

My mum died on a Christmas day a few years ago. She had dementia and had struggled to live her life after my elder brother died of leukaemia 3 years previously. She was happily married to Charles , my Dad, for 64 years. Dad died 67 days later after caring for Beth for a number of years.
I have never really recovered from the shock of discovering the bulk buying of incontinence pads stored in the garage in Harrow where they lived. Or indeed, seeing the glazed look on her face at Mike’s funeral.

My Dad applied a logistical and truly loving approach to dealing with Mum’s problems. He slept downstairs in case of Mum’s desire to do a runner. He was a scientist, highly intelligent and extremely practical with a career that was based on superb engineering skills. He had a lathe. He kept sulphuric and nitric acid in his workshop. He could make or mend anything. He was part of the team that introduced the radar in World War II.
By the same token, Mum was also extremely practical and one of the gentlest and wisest people I have ever had the honour to know. I never saw her change a fuse on a plug, but she was responsible for inspecting the electrical systems in Wellington and Lancaster bombers being built during the war near Manchester.

And apart from Christmas and Easter, when the family would all congregate and we would hear Dad’s truly awful jokes and watch Mum making gravy the old way, their three children never really got under the skin of their earlier lives. Having said that, I think Jenny , my sister, probably did know more than me. Probably a mum/daughter relationship perhaps.

However, the crux of this piece is not to explain my frustration at not knowing more about my parents’ earlier life which is now too late to find out about, but to highlight the wonderful thing that happens when people develop dementia.

I am not a clinician, doctor or professor in the condition. My background is in marketing and advertising, and I think that as a society we have to grab an opportunity that is being offered to us. I believe there is a volcano of information waiting to erupt from people’s minds that we are not exploring due to our belief that we have to make people’s lives much more comfortable. We approach reminiscence work as a way of helping the people living with dementia and perhaps non- professionals are a little fearful of how to deal with the condition.

The general approach is very much to do with helping people living with dementia, as opposed to helping people living with people living with dementia. If the carers realised how much information was sitting in their relatives’ minds and all it needs is to prompt and tease the information out, the benefits to the carers I believe are enormous. This approach applies right across the care industry.

In effect, we are talking about knowledge management. Not a new idea but to give an example – when somebody retires from a job after 40 years’ service, they walk out of the door and take an enormous amount of knowledge and experience that the company will never be able to tap into anymore unless sound knowledge retention protocols have been put in place. We almost need to treat carers as a PLC organisation that needs nurturing for the future – and the seeds of growth are in existence and staring us in the face.

So when somebody is dealing with the effects of living with dementia, they offer a fertile ground for developing an extension of knowledge for their children and relatives about their earlier lives. And that’s the golden opportunity we are perhaps missing with our attitudes towards “helping” people living with dementia.
We need to flip our general approach on its head and look for ways of not only looking after people living with dementia, but change the attitudes of all carers to realise and understand that they have to learn not only to love their relatives in a different way but use their historical memories that exist in a way that helps all parties.

If we can accept that change of mind-set, then we will be able to seize on the mental golden opportunity that is danger of being missed and big steps forward are there for the taking for all concerned.

Copyright “Rolling Back The Years” 2015