Saturday 15 November 2014

Dementia mental tests

The other day I needed to take part in a Lewy body dementia project, something I agreed to do last year

I did this willingly, because unless we do things like this the professionals will never learn more about this illness.

However I had to take the Addenbrookes mental test at the Start of it all.

While some of this is fine, I really struggle with the part where I have to remember a persons, name and full address. Yes we get prompts when we cannot remember parts of this test, but the person doing this looked a little bewildered when I asked what this proved.

I was asked why I was questioning this as she did not seem to grasp why I was asking.
In the end I said,  it is in normal life we do not have the luxury of prompts to remember things, we either remember something or it's gone into the list of time.
I think this made the lady wonder if I was trying to be awkward, but I am sure that somewhere along the line she must have realised, that like it or not it's a fact.
We either remember what we are doing, or we forget, but like it or not my short term memory is rubbish at times
My wife my be good, but she does not always know what I am thinking about, or trying to work out.

I was told that this Addenbrookes test is to help assess people, which is fine, but please let us have tests which are meaningful to us, and not relying on prompts which need a yes or no answer.

In all fairness, if we do not remember the answer, we should be allowed to say I don't know, rather than be made to take a guess. 


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