Interview 21  

Interview 21

Age at Interview: 52
Sex: Female
Age at Diagnosis: 57
Background: A former nurse and mother of four who cares for her husband (a doctor) at home. He was diagnosed in 1997. Also providing distance care for her elderly demented mother.

Brief outline:Her husband developed Picks' disease when he was 57. The patchy nature of his dementia made it difficult to convince people that his problems were real. Delay in getting the diagnosis meant they experienced extreme difficulties in accessing his health insurance.


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Has to decide whether in allowing her husband freedom she is taking an unacceptable risk.

 



My husband still plays golf, he has a group, mainly from church who collect him, out of great kindness and play golf and bring him back again. Now for various reasons that they're a lot older, their health is failing, the whole system is beginning to fall apart and there is the option to go to a much closer golf course, which it would be easier to get a taxi, or me to do one way or whatever. But it would mean going as an individual and picking up a partner on spec. Now that is potentially a minefield, given my husband's condition.

Now I was faced with, do I dig my heels in and try and persuade him not to pursue something that's very important to him and gives him a lot of pleasure, or do I risk knowing that the thing might become unstuck. He might play with someone who doesn't know he's got that disease, he might do something unacceptable, or react in an inappropriate fashion, and then I've got to unscramble that. And again I, I chose, I think we have to live with risk. We have to live with risk and its just deciding what's an acceptable risk, and I decided that was. And actually it came horribly unstuck, on one occasion.

Jonathan Miller - Dementia
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