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Early and accurate detection can make a lot of difference to people’s lives. Firstly, the symptoms you are concerned about may not be dementia, just changes that occur with age; it may be psychological problems that make it harder to remember, concentrate and make decisions; it may that your excessive alcohol consumption over a number of years has effected your brain (and it might be time to stop); it may that you have a dementia type that is more easily treated. In any case it is important to know about this so you and your family can plan ahead and make some important decisions while you can still fully participate.

Your choice
It is vitally important that as you grow older and more vulnerable you are able to make some choices about your future. Most often dementia is associated with depression and anxiety (which make symptoms worse) that result from the losses you may experience and these can occur if others’ make choices for you that you find hard to deal with. You might not be able to care for yourself completely and you may forget things, but you can still feel and you need people to understand that your feelings are still important even when you find it hard to tell anyone. Planning will put you in control of what might happen to you, including the chance of being placed a nursing home apart from all that is familiar and important to you.

It is also important that those who are testing you talk to you, not just to your carers as if you don’t exist. You must be allowed to make choices about what you want to talk about and the things that effect you. It is your choice as to who gets any results and what you do with this knowledge.

At the same time, with your permission, it is important to have those who care about you let us know from their perspective how you are doing so we get a broad view of the problems you may have in daily living. Sometimes it is really important to talk to carers about what is happening to you for them to understand and to be more patient and more able to be helpful. Sometimes they are just as confused and distressed about what is happening as you are, but mostly they want to be able to help you to improve your quality of life and functioning and to retain the relationship as long as possible.