After the first 4 years of my journey with Dementia began in 2014, 2018 marked the beginning of change in my journey with Dementia.

As new year dawned, I was still in that dark place following my diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and Frontotemporal Dementia in March 2017, without the support of the NHS or local Authorities

By the end of March 2018, with the help of the A Good Life with Dementia course ,I had begun to re-engage with life and had begun to reinvent myself.

By the end of June, I had climbed out of the metaphorical Dark Hole  and begun to climb out of the black hole behind.

Whilst I try to show that there is a life to live after after a younger/earlier diagnosis, to offset the stigma of the media perceptions of Dementia, it is in no way intended to belittle the experiences of professionals or care partners who generally have a negative experience of Dementia in the end stage or Palliative stage as I refer to it.

It is because of my experiences of that stigma from the point of my diagnosis that I write these articles to hopefully enable some who follow, receiving their diagnosis.