During 2017, one of my daughters and my eldest grandson nearly died from Carbon-monoxide poisoning from a faulty boiler and my eldest Grandson also had a cancer scare.

My Father passed away in July and in September, I went to work for the last time, finally retiring in February 2018.

In the past, I could have dealt better with these events but the changes in me over the last 3 years and I suppose the years of denial leading up to my Dementia diagnosis in March 2017 made it all so much harder to deal with.

Over that time, I had a whole set of new challenges, totally out of character for me.

Remembering recent events

Forgetting to ring my Father, something I had done twice a week for over 20 years.

Speech and conversation

Losing words

I stopped reading as I would forget what I had read a few lines later and by the next day, I had no real idea what a book was about.

Getting lost in familiar places.

Forgetting names and faces, Birthdays, Anniversaries.

My mobile phone became like my memory addon

Days, Dates and times would be a mystery to me.

Typing on a keyboard became less accurate.

Sleepless night and wandering.

Putting things in strange place.

Getting confused when things were moved from their usual place.

Loud noise was becoming challenging, sometimes on the shuttle bus I could have screamed at the Med Students, there were so many conversations going on and it seemed as though they were competing to talk the loudest.

and many more examples

Apart from family, friends and work colleagues, it was a case of doing the best we could day by day. Each day brought new challenges and it was hard to motivate myself past each day.

Add to all this the seemingly non-existent support 2017, was a dark year metaphorically but thankfully, the example of my Father living as well as he could over 27 years with a diagnosis of throat cancer and once I started to take part in research and Twitter, all lead to change.