I found Fanny Johnstone’s article interesting in that it highlighted the hope, as opposed to the so-often associated despair, in caring for someone with dementia (‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world’: 10 things I learned when my father had dementia, 8 January). However, I found the circumstances to be somewhat exceptional.
For most people, the upheaval caused by caring for someone with dementia can be extremely testing, time-consuming and highly stressful. I looked after my own wife, who was diagnosed with dementia when she was only 56 years old, for eight years prior to her admission into a nursing home. During that time, I often felt very isolated, lonely, emotionally and physically drained and, at times, desperate. The whole experience was ultimately life-changing.
