DEMENTIA JUST BEEN DIAGNOSED? SHARED FEELINGS.

It was when I was ordering a book on line from Amazon that it happened. I just couldn't remember the name of my street! Then, as I fiddled around my screen filled with the usual icons and I just couldn't remember which one to press. A feeling of absolute panic swept through me like a tornado, and a curtain of mist seemed to descend like the end of a play. After a while the curtain rose again as if for the players to receive their congratulations after the show and my memory came back.
After the panic the mood changed to fear and worry and I realised that I really must go and visit the quack. After almost twenty years of memory loss something serious was happening.
I think that I must have been in denial, but I was shocked when the doctor, having heard the symptoms declared quite unequivocally that I was suffering from dementia. With what I subsequently learned from the internet it was obvious that I was in the second stage or thereabouts of dementia. What was even worse was that I learned that dementia is not a disease in itself, but rather the symptom of something more sinister and there was an 80% chance that this would be Alzheimer's disease.
With my head in my hands I sat in despair, seeing a bleak future in which my life would slip away behind a curtain of mist that would descend time and time again with increasing rapidity.
Depression then took over and having suffered from this in the past I knew that I must fight it. Fortunately I had learned to deal with this pernicious problem many years before and my naturally optimistic nature began to re-assert itself.
As I thought back, I realised that from the symptoms that had manifested themselves so very slowly over almost twenty years, that I had had dementia for the whole period. I remembered forgetting where I had parked the car. How names and faces had become increasingly difficult to remember and how words had sometimes eluded me. As a writer this should have been a problem, but in fact I had discovered that if I concentrated I could remember most of the things that eluded. Although that was hopeful, I also remembered that sometimes this forced remembering had quite exhausted me.
However, on the internet I discovered a plethora of information and although part of the cause of my disease might well have been inherited, my lifestyle had also contributed to a substantial degree. I came to realize the exercise of the body, mind and spirit were part of the problem.
Having completely changed my lifestyle and made some interesting discoveries along the way, my dementia has been arrested and I have every hope that this will remain the case.
However, even if I am only delaying the inevitable my life is full and happy. So if you or someone close has dementia do not despair, there is a lot of hope.
David Barnato.
Paarl.
South Africa.
barnatod@blogspot.com