Towards the end of 2014 I began to learn more about the organisation 'Dementia Friends'. This is a group for anyone to join so that they are able to learn more about Dementia and become a friend in need to those affected. This might be a friend, family member or loved one, or even yourself. Dementia Friends is about understanding the tragic illness and learning about how to become more helpful towards people suffering and people affected. It takes less than 5 minutes to become a Dementia Friend. All you need to do is watch a video which is about a story of a lady who has been affected by the illness herself. You then fill in all your details and your friendship pack is sent to you. The friendship pack actually arrived for me pretty quickly and as soon as it arrived I took out the badge and popped it on my work uniform.
When you become a Dementia Friend you are able to attend local sessions to support and volunteer within the Dementia environment in your local area. This is to learn more about people with the illness and ways that you can help.
The main reason which I applied to become a Dementia Friend was mainly down to my Nana. My nana was first diagnosed when I was in my first few years of secondary school and she has quickly deteriorated as the years have gone by. My nana has always been a huge inspiration to me, seen as we're a big family it has all been down to her. My nana bought up 11 children, including 6 month old twins (one of those being my mum) on her own once my granddad passed away. She continued to bring up 11 happy and healthy children as well as keep a steady job at the local hospital to make ends meet for the family up until she retired at 60. My nana has always been fit as a fiddle, out and about with her lady friends and catching up at the community centre so when she began to deteriorate it got to us all a lot more. We'd have to schedule times for when we could make sure that someone was with her in her bungalow at the best times and she was being looked after properly. This is funnily enough when I learnt how to make tea, because my nana struggled to understand how to do it, I had to learn to make her tea for her. Definitely a point I miss about her.
To this day my beautiful Eileen Rose is still with us, but she isn't exactly who she used to be. She is looked after by amazing people in a nursing home local to us where we visit her regularly and I chat to her about what's going on in our lives. I don't like the idea of not talking to her even if she can't talk back, she's still around and still a huge part of my life. Nobody knows what goes on in people's heads when they're affected by Dementia, but I still think that my nana can understand my voice. Some days I can actually see a smile coming from her little mouth and she makes attempts to mumble words back to me and my mum. These are moments that make me smile and remember who my nana used to be.
When you become a Dementia Friend you will understand more about people affected and definitely become more understanding with their difficulties. As I work part time in a supermarket I make sure that I keep my dementia friend badge with me all the time just in case it's needed. We have all sorts of customers coming into our store every day and quite often regular elderly customers that may be affected by the illness, I can't say because I don't know there backgrounds but there are few signs. I have a few stories from wearing my Dementia friends badge and understanding customers in store that may be affected. Here's my favourite.
You never know what difference you're going to make to someone's day.
Katie xxx
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