DEMENTIA MEMORY LOSS AND TIME

My own dementia advances very slowly, like a dripping tap, a drip a day. However, the illness has been with me for over ten years, so I have been very lucky, but the evidence of memory loss steadily emerges like an iceburg, floating to the surface. My overall health is excellent for a man of seventy two, so I am gratful for that and the fact that my loss has been so slow. As I have said before, with luck I wont live long enough to move into full blown Alzheimer's, but that is in the hands of God. So far the steps that I have taken have worked well and prayer was an important part of the process and God must take the credit in telling me what to do. One curious thing that I have noticed with my memory loss is that it increasingly involves losing small bits of time. For example if I am working out on the boring old treadmill, I usually count off the seconds and go up to one thousand. Until recently this was very tedious, relieved only by SAFM Radio. Now however, the time seems to go quicker because I lose bits of the experience, in the same way that I forgot what we did last Christmas and all memory of the event has gone. Now when I peddle away and glance occassionally at the time spent on the machine I am often amazed that I only feel as if I have been pounding away for a couple of minutes, whereas I will have exercised for perhaps ten minutes. So, all is not bad with memory loss. In other ways I am doing very well and I am pleased with my book of inspirational poetry, 'The Journey'. which will be published on Amazon next week. I don't expect very big sales of a book of poetry, but I do hope that other sufferers will read and feel as I do, that so much is still possible, even with dementia.The proceeds from the book will go to "Dementia Mentors Paarl.' We have returned here in Paarl to wonderful sunny weather of about 30%. Absolutely fabulous. Boysie will soon be taking his first swim and so will I. David Barnato. Paarl. South Africa.