KATIE MAYERS

A lot of people think that dementia just affects the brain, but in actual fact, it can affect everything. In the video to see what it's like for someone with Dementia they have to wear sunglasses, to show dark less vigilant vision, but with lights going everywhere for their confusion. They were wearing earphones, with a loud noise, to show how they may not hear you the first time around when you say something. They had to wear gloves, as they are unable to identify different textures and feelings, and they had spikes in their shoes to make the ground feel lumpy and uneven leaving you a little disorientated. Lastly, when they were in the room, they kept being asked to 'find something useful to do' which relates to a person with dementia feeling like they always have to be doing something or should be doing something, so they don't feel useless.

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Talking to someone with dementia can sometimes be frustrating and/or confusing, but that main thing is to be patient. when it comes to them losing their memories, they often lose their most recent ones first, so think of it as a big unstable bookshelf, all the books containing memories, oldest memories at the bottom and the most recent memories at the top. Now every time dementia hits the brain, it's like an earthquake and it ends up knocking the top books off the shelf, therefore losing the memory. As for the emotion, the feeling of being happy with someone or feeling safe, never leaves, those emotions are books in a big hardwood bookshelf, which is very sturdy and won't allow the books to fall out. So even if they don't know who you are they will still have an emotional attachment to you, but this can cause frustration, anger, and confusion in them because they know that you are an important person in their life, they just don't know how.