What I Wish People Knew About Dementia: From Someone Who Knows Paperback – 2 Feb. 2023

- Wendy Mitchell has written a wonderful book to help guide anyone who either has or is experiencing a loved one with dementia in how and what it's all about and where to go for help. Often, we think of dementia as a disease of memory but it so much more than that as I'm realising with having lived with a loved one now who has early dementia. Dementia is also about changes in perception, our senses and taste, and hallucinations as well as many other factors. What’s great about this book is she explore these things that you might take for granted and not be aware of.- Very early on in the book, the author describes the process of eating. When you put food in the mouth, you might have forgotten you've got it in the mouth and then you don't know how long you've chewed it and then you forgotten how to swallow it and then you swallow it and start choking or aspirating on the food. There is also the fact that you can't even see the food on the table. It's all white, so for example, one of the things that the Wendy Mitchell did as she started eating fish rather than meat was because it just took too long to chew and swallow meat and knowing where it was in the mouth and how long she masticated it for. I wondered if similar things happened to children with autism and other sensory issues.- The book is such a compassionate and humane look at how we should be treating and managing dementia from someone who is on that journey herself. It can help us to explain and understand and by using empathy, to create a much better model for supporting these elderly and younger people who might have a disease where their brain is being slowly taken away from them. They are still individuals who have rights. By understanding the sensory preferences and the fact that dementia can impact on everyone and by being aware of the language that we should use to make this and more dignified way of managing the problem that is dementia.- The book looks at how we should focus not just on what the person can't do, which is so much of what happens in dementia, but on what they are able to do and achieve and to then work on those strengths. we have to recognise that dementia is a neurological condition which strips the brain of many of its abilities to function, but people can still lead healthy and happy and creative lives, we just need to tap into that and recognise the language that we use can be harmful.- One of the words Wendy does like to use if the word ‘the journey’ that people are on as they travel this new land. Although memories might seem significantly impaired, it's important to know that many people with dementia still have full emotional lives and will feel things, they just may struggle to explain and understand what's going on, but they still feel emotions and it's important to respect these emotions and to try and support them in so many different ways.- There are many different types of dementia and it's important to understand that all of these will impact on the brain and how we behave in very many ways but it's also important that we should understand and try to be empathetic and realise these people also feel similar emotions, but they will be slightly changed in how they respond to things. One of the things in the book is that when Mitchell talks about a friend who dies. She felt the grief, but also the fact that she can respond in a different way even though the response will change.- I love the analogy of looking at your brain as a series of motorways and interlocking roads in which thoughts and memories travel by, but with dementia and the brain being damaged, means that some of those roads are closed and there are some roadwork’s on going which means that sometimes your thoughts will get there through diverted means and sometimes never arrive at all..- I love the analogy about the child who looks at a seashell that they picked up of the shore and how they become so focused in it that nothing else disrupt their focus, and yet as we get older, we become more obsessed with thinking about something else and becoming distracted. Dementia can be a similar kind of nature where we still become more interested in single things and being oblivious to everything else but that's not necessarily a bad thing.- There's a lot of negativity around it the diagnosis of dementia but it's important to see it more as a journey and to praise people and tell them how well they are doing, for example living alone and being independent and managing their day and to see that they're now on a different journey and yes, life is full of uncertainty about what will happen to us in the same true of people with the diagnosis or what they can do and the journey that they're on which will be a little bit different to the one that they had perceived, they might been on otherwise.- Finally, the thing to acknowledge it about how you don't give up on yourself because everyone else will do that, but you can achieve more than you might think. A lovely book that I would recommend to anyone suffering from dementia or wants to understand a loved one or friend who has dementia.

I really enjoyed this book and the insight of how it is living with dementia and the impact of other people's perception on people who have been diagnosed. I now know that how you behave with someone who has dementia can make it a hard disease to live with or a positive experience. It was also interesting how Wendy described how environments can make a difference especially using black on floors can make it look like a huge frightening hole in the floor. Well done Wendy for so eloquently explaining what it's like to live with dementia. Anyone newly diagnosed or caring for someone living with dementia should read this book. I'd highly recommend this as a good read for anyone.

Bought for the wife as her father has been diagnosed with dementia and we need to know what's in store for us all.Anyone who's going through such an ordeal should read a book like this.

This book is amazingVery Highly recommend if you want to know more about an individual who is going through the stages of Dementia.

Everyone needs to read Wendys books. I have all 3. So insightful and educational. Even if your life is not touched by dementia..........yet.........you will learn so much, and see the world in a different way.What an incredibly brave woman.I wish I knew this too before my mother in law was really lost to us because of this cruel disease. I am better placed now to help sufferers and their families with this nasty disease.

I believe this is a book that everyone over 50 should read. It explains why so many of the stereotypical views of dementia are misconceived. But most importantly it shows why a greater understanding of dementia is needed throughout society.

I heard the author interviewed on the radio, and subsequently bought the book. Contains good and helpful insight into dementia.

If you are interested in dementia information, you need to know the book is about Wendy Mitchell's experience of young-onset dementia, aged 58. The book is NOT about mainstream old-age dementia, where sufferers (yes, Wendy, I still say sufferers) have many age related ailments in addition to dementia. Old-age dementia has little meaningful comparison to Wendy's articulate, fit and mobile, young-onset scenario. However, the book is thought-provoking and well written and for some people well worth a read. There are omissions - for example, nothing about sexual emotions, domestic animals, and finance.