Lewy Body dementia and seeing things

 As a person with a form of Lewy Body Dementia, I often see things which may or may not be there, and this can be very hard to understand let alone explain.

Sometimes when I am at home I see huge spiders, running across the floor, at first this was upsetting, and I would lash out with a shoe or slipper, but my coordination is not that brilliant, so I had to stop before I did some damage to the television or something else.

When this started we had a dog which used to lie near my feet, so I learnt to tell if they were real or not, because if he saw a spider he would chase it, But my wife told me that if he did not move, then they were not real.

That was fine until he passed away then it was left to me to decide. These days my wife tells me if there is something there or not, because she watches me looking at something and asks what is wrong.

However life can be difficult at times trying to work out whether something is real, or if my brain is playing tricks with me.

Even outside I have to look more than once to see if something is real, and this can be hard when people are watching me to see what is going on.

The brain is a very complicated thing, when I hear about it, because I never realised that it controls what we see, hear, and smell etc, and this causes problems when I get my eyesight tested.

This is because my eyesight seems to change so much, and where I thought it was just my eyes playing up, I now understand it’s the brain getting the wrong signals, if I got this right.

This also causes other problems these days, because if I an at home and see a bird flying past our windows I tend to duck. These are mainly reflections in the glazed doors inside the house, which make me feel as if the bird is actually inside the house and flying towards me.

Recently this has got worse outside if a bird flys over my head, I still duck because it feels closer than it is in real life.