Bookcase

My parents had a visit from a local mental health nurse this morning. She was arranged by the Parkinson’s nurse as a follow-up to see how good or bad my Dad’s brain is working.

She started off asking small questions like “do you out things down and lose them?” which he was able to confirm (don’t we all) but soon progressed on to bigger and deeper questions about if he felt safe or always knew where he was and who people were.

As I suspected, he put on a good show of trying to be normal, but you could tell that he wasn’t quite there based on the way he referred to us as we sat in the room. My mum and I were also able to chip in and give more examples of his behaviour, which he had forgotten or things he had said that were out of character.

She did say that all of the symptoms were likely to be related to the Parkinson’s tricking his brain, making up stories to fill in gaps.

She gave an example that the brain is like a bookcase. On the lower shelves, all of your early memories are stacked, along with your abilities like reading, riding a bike or swimming. As you grow older, the shelves fill up with memories from bottom to the top, with the most recent memories on the top shelf. Parkinson’s or other dementia diseases can shake the shelf and some memories will drop out on to the floor, leaving gaps. There isn’t any pattern to what falls out, but the books on the lower shelf, your oldest memories and abilities, don’t tend to fall out as they are more secure than those at the top of the bookcase. Also, some books (memories) can get put back on the shelves, but they might not always go back on the right shelf, so some memories might be accessible, but feel like they are in the incorrect time period.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that it is possible to put everything back where it should go. Looking at old photographs can help as it will allow you to re-remember things, or place them a certain times in your life. So that is something we need to look into creating. They have an iPad that they use all the time, so I will see what I can upload to their Photos app to look at. They also have an AppleTV, so they can look at their photos on the larger screen too if they want.

The nurse is going to get some medication prescribed to help him sleep better. He admitted that he had always suffered from bad sleep quality, something I don’t ever remember. Perhaps he was laying awake, worrying about work or something. He wasn’t able to vocalise why this was, or didn’t want to say. He does seem better when he has slept properly, and it will also allow my mum to have more restorative sleep. She is running on empty at the moment with everything that has been happening with him over the last 3 weeks or so.

As with these sorts of things, she left and advised that she would need to pass the issue on to the next team to decide how to proceed. I think he will officially be labelled with “Dementia” which will help unlock additional free support if they need it from various teams in our National Health Service (NHS).

These things all take time to get in motion. At least we aren’t fighting against insurance companies or high costs for meds. Everything so far has been free. I guess it might take longer to get organised, but I am grateful for our free healthcare in the UK