Alzheimer’s has a face. And unfortunately, many of us know what s/he looks like. My late Grandma lived with dementia. She never got a formal diagnosis, but she lost her short term memory and soon failed to recognise her own children. All of her sisters bar one lived with dementia. Her father lived with dementia. Bringing it closer to my generation, at least 2 of her 3 daughters are now displaying symptoms associated with dementia. On my father’s side of the family, one of his brothers is living with dementia. His sister in law is living with dementia.
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Dementia in Jamaica: Challenging Stigma, Responding in Love.
It has most likely happened to us at some point. During conversation with (usually) an older person you’re exchanging information, answering and asking questions, you explain that you’re so and so’s daughter and that you do X for a living. Two minutes later, you’re hit with the question: So who are your parents? And what do you do? You’re taken aback, you pause, then you respond. This will likely happen another two times or so during the course of the interaction. You catch the eye of someone else across the room. They put their index finger to their head and make air circles and shrug. You nod with understanding, and begin to extricate yourself from the conversation with wan apologies and excuses of needing to speak to someone else. You walk away shaking your head with pity and maybe a little fear, fear that someday you’ll succumb to the inevitable fate of failing memory as you age. Words like senile and Alzheimer’s and dementia swirl around in your mind and you pray that you escape such a fate.
Continue reading Dementia in Jamaica: Challenging Stigma, Responding in Love.