talkhealth Blog

I should have realised something wasn’t quite right when every meal my mother served contained Noodles.  From being a very conservative cook – ie meat and two veg, it was a real surprise when my children came home from staying with her for a couple of days and claimed with great glee – “…we had noodles with every meal at grandma’s”.

I am pleased to report that this didn’t include breakfast.  I thought it rather strange and didn’t say anything, but the next time we all went round for a meal with her, out came the noodles.  I asked what was with the noodles having never seen her in my life cook them before.  After various ramblings and contradictory responses I realised that she had completely muddled them with potatoes which were part of her every day diet. 

Dementia – is very much about denial and my mother after realising what was happening, corrected what to me seemed like the wrong programming and was then back on track, but was in total denial that she had confused the two to start with.  The brain is extremely clever and manages to mask for a very long time real problems, both to the outside world and to the person themselves.  It is only looking back do I now see what I think were the early signs of dementia; another example was the milk.  Suddenly from vehmently shouting at me as a teenager to put the milk immediately back in the fridge after use, it would now always be kept out, resulting in always being served with just off milk – lovely……

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Catriona

Hello - I am Catriona and part of the talkhealth team. I initially started my blog based on my experiences of having a mother with the diagnosis of vasular dementia. Any views expressed are my own.