A Norton Rose Group magazine Issue 3 Re: WoRk dementia the ...

United Kingdom
LAurA shumiLoff,
on her fAther
The Parkinson’s that my father has is basically loss of
movement, the mind slowing down. The best word to
describe it is withdrawal.
He was diagnosed 15 years ago and is now in the terminal
stages.
It’s really difficult to find out good information about
Parkinson’s. I think you only do that by talking to people
who’ve been through similar circumstances. There’s no
useful information whatsoever on the internet.
He’s been in a nursing home for 18 months. The staff are
amazingly kind, but it’s almost as though they treat their
‘guests’ like pets. My father’s name is Malcolm. “All right,
Malc. How are you, darling?” There should be more dignity.
On his 80th birthday, he was asleep the whole day.
Does he know who I am? No, I don’t think he does, to be
honest. Does that upset me? No. It doesn’t upset me at all.
The only time I really got upset was when I first saw him in
a nursing home.
I think we owe a duty of care to our families to look after
them at home for as long as we can.
It’s very hard on people who are around. You’ve got this
continual nagging guilt that you’re not there with the
person, and in reality the person probably wouldn’t know
whether you were there or not.
My father hasn’t said anything to me for about six months
but very occasionally he smiles at me, and his face lights
up, and you can see the personality that he used to have.
He’s such a lovely man. A real sweetie. And a prodigious
intellect.
I was abroad on business when he was moved into the
home and apparently for the first week it was absolutely
horrendous. When I went to see him, I walked into the
room and he was lying curled up in a ball on an unmade
bed.
There’s a huge spectrum of people in this home. There is
my father, who is basically sane but has dementia, if you
can term it that way; and there are people who are literally
crying out every five minutes.
Don’t get me wrong, there’ve been some quite funny
moments. I walked into their common room and there were
three old ladies having their hair done under those old hair
dryers, and they were all of them just beaming at me, with
no teeth, and I was thinking, my God, I just cannot see
:Falling away
myself in this place; when I’m old, please take me out and
shoot me.
My father has a very sweet tooth, so every time we go to see
him we buy him some cakes. On one visit, I put this custard
slice on the table and went into the kitchen to get a plate,
came back, and he’d already eaten half of it and the other
half was in his top pocket.
Laura Shumiloff’s father died shortly after this interview.
Belgium
CAroLine JAnssens,
on her GrAndfAther
It’s a long and short story at the same time and
was extremely painful.
My grandfather showed signs of dementia
which worsened quite quickly. He confused
days and nights, he would force my
grandmother to wake in the middle of the
night to prepare breakfast; he would get lost
in his own neighbourhood; and he stopped
recognising my grandmother.
He was 89 when it started. When he died he
was 92 and my grandmother was 90.
It’s when he stopped recognising my
grandmother that things became very difficult.
When he was young he was held captive
during the Second World War, and at the
end of his life he started seeing things from
the war. So he was at home, there was this
strange woman he didn’t know, and she was
potentially German, and she wanted to hurt
him; it was a complete mess.
It became extremely aggressive. What was
terrible about his story is that we think that
my grandmother hid those things from us for a
long time because she didn’t want to worry us.
I mean, she had been with her husband for 70
years; I think she wanted to protect him.
And he ended up killing my grandmother by
accident. It’s a very, very sad story.
The day before, my mother had called their
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