Recap-This Month’s Theme
This month we are focusing primarily on carer issuess on the specific topic ’Taking Care of Me’.
Week 1 we looked at this from a helicopter view .
Week 2 we zoomed in on a specific issue, ‘making Life simpler for ourselves’ , using the KISS principle and taking into account the responsibilities implicit in living with and taking care of someone having the chronic health condition of dementia.
Moving on-Book Reviews
This week, Week 3 and the next, I’ve decided to do book reviews of two very different, recently published books (2022 and 2021). Each deals, from very different perspectives, with dementia.
Whoever you are reading this, I hope you feel inspired to at least dip into these books, because they both offer in different ways, important current understandings of dementia and ways of living with it.
Each carries messages for carers to absorb and integrate.
What I wish people knew about dementia
What I wish people knew about dementia: from someone who knows Is authored by Wendy Mitchell and published in the UK in 2021.
I had not previously come across Wendy Mitchell when I discovered this book in my local library. Previously, Wendy authored ‘Somebody I Used to Know’. She also publishes a blog with the intriguing title, Which Me Am I Today?
A Note on the Author:
“Wendy Mitchell spent 20 years as a non-clinical team leader in the NHS before being diagnosed with young-onset dementia in July 2014 at the age of fifty-eight. Shocked by the lack of awareness about the disease, both in the community and in hospitals, she vowed to spend her time raising awareness about dementia and encouraging others to see that there is life after a diagnosis. In 2019 she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Health by the University of Bradford for her contribution to research. She has two daughters and lives in Yorkshire. “
I liked this book. I can see Wendy being an inspiration to people living with dementia and her book an invaluable reference for all carers and witness bystanders in the community.
From the many research critiques she references and discusses, she richly deserves that Honorary Doctor of Health.
Practical Commonsense
Wendy Mitchell is completely practical. She writes about her own experience and the experience of a group of friends with dementia whose perspectives she has canvasssed and sprinkles throughout the book. Her critiques of reports and other developments relating to dementia published in the UK are thoughtful as well as thought-provoking.
Taking Care of Me
You only start to take care of yourself in a meaningful way when you admit to the extent of what your life involves. As a carer of a person living with dementia, you will benefit from this first had account of what it is like to live with dementia. Even though as Wendy Mitchell emphaisises, when you know a person with dementia, you know one person with dementia. Everyone else is different.
Themes and Topics
The structure of the book is set out in themes and topics within these themes, in Contents, making it an easy read. The ‘themes ‘ are Senses, Relationships, Communication, Environment, Emotions, Attitude, Epilogue.
What To Do Next
- Order the book, online or through your local bookshop. Or do as I have done, read it through your local library.
- Read it.
- Recommend it to friends.
- Lend it out and/or write a review for your local interest/study group/U3A chapter or similar.
And let us know what you think in the comments section below.