As the symptoms of dementia seem to be progressing, the one thing that seems significant to me right now is my inability to keep up with a conversation, especially over the telephone as the visual clues are missing. It is easy for me to say yes or no reasonably appropriately, but not so easy to more fully discuss or respond to the other person/people. When in a group, my husband works overtime as my back up brain, stepping in when he sees me stalling, or watching for visual clues of distress or confusion. It feels like I am in a fog, or inside a Gravitron, an analogy I used earlier in 2012, or drowning.

During conversation in groups, I often ‘disappear’ or find other things I ‘have to do’, for example if having people for a meal or coffee at home, I might go and prepare something in the kitchen, or wash dishes, or go to the bathroom. On the telephone, I simply ‘wing it’ most of the time and feel much like the confused telephone in this clip art! Inside my mind, I am questioning everything, wondering what people mean, trying desperately to remember the events of people they are talking about, or sometimes even what they said at the beginning of the sentence.

For the person with dementia, communicating with others becomes more difficult, but as we so often ‘fake it’ and learn ways to appear as if all is okay, it must be hard for our friends and family, or carers, to even comprehend we are not really in a conversation. Admitting to ourselves is challenging enough,  but  allowing others to know our reality is almost unbearable.