Forget Them Not

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday May 15, 2003

LEIGH SHELLEY

My mother, Gwen, is 86 and in fine health. Her blood pressure is 120/80, her only serious hospital admissions were for childbirth (no complications) and, up until recently, she was a pack-a-day smoker for about 60 years.

As a former quiz show champion in the 1960s, Gwen can still tell all about the life story of Elizabeth of Glamis when I present her with a rose of that name.

Yet Gwen needs full-time care. In her mind, she still lives in Bondi and her sons and husband (or is it her brothers and father?) will be home soon and she needs to get their dinner on. Or it's 1944, she's at work at Tooth's Kent Brewery and worried she's not up to the job.

Gwen has severe and worsening dementia. She now permanently resides in a dementia-specific facility that has a policy of no restraints and avoids medications that sedate the residents.

What's lacking in medication is provided for with activities, smiles, laughter and outings. Even a visit to the snow is under consideration.

Every Friday I visit and play bingo with Gwen and a dozen or so other ``residents". Gwen nods off while I play and if we win I wake her and say ``Call out bingo, Mum!" and she responds ``Why?"

Occasionally, she'll come out with comments such as ``34, I don't like 34" or ``That's a nice number, I've always liked 28." Of course, I agree with her because I know she was great at mental arithmetic, so the concept of ``nice numbers" stems from a lifetime of account keeping without the benefit of even a hand-held calculator.

We don't know why or when her dementia started. Looking back, one can see the signs were there earlier than we first thought. When I look around at bingo, the course of this illness is extremely diverse. Some of the other residents can seem very lucid but within weeks they seem to decline to incoherency and immobility.

Take Evelyn, for instance, whose professional demeanour and brusque Scottish manner was so convincing that many visitors leaving the centre held open the security gate for her while she ``just ducked home for a minute".

When she was provided with a sign on her back warning visitors about believing her story she was outrageously offended at their lack of manners. Now she sits inoffensively in her chair, barely stringing two words together. No, it's not the drugs, it's dementia.

And Leon. With his jaunty tweed trilby and a stylish walking stick, he's always late for bingo because of his need to be properly attired for the day.

Slipping seamlessly from Russian to English, he's prone to aggression if things don't go well. I give him a wide berth but love his style.

Then there's Peter, a handsome Greek who loves to flirt and feign incompetence to get my attention. Once when I told him I had two young children he declared ``Why only two!" and, raising his fist in the air, ``I give my wife seven children!"

I was impressed with this display of macho self-confidence but it was tamed slightly by his age, his wheelchair and the checked woollen knee rug. And, of course, his dementia.

Dementia, while causing each of these people to obviously suffer and deteriorate, still opens a window on some incredibly interesting people. It's a view finder that focuses on someone's personality, their history, their idiosyncrasies but not the sorts of information we normally see as essential.

I feel very honoured to sit at Friday bingo and watch these wonderful revelations, while they are unable to tell me their name much less remember a pin number.

Every week when I visit Gwen I first remind her who I am, that we're going to play bingo, that she won't be late for work and, of course, that she'll be home in time to cook the boys' tea.

I'm grateful we have this time together and dementia has let me get to know her so well. I'm grateful that the care she receives, rather than demeaning her, is wonderfully nurturing and respectful of these people and their diversity. It has given my mother such worth in a world where she no longer can function.

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