Dementia can totally change a personality

Sandra, you know, you talk about mum being, can, could have been very, very difficult at times. And she wasn't like that before? No. No. That, when she was diagnosed in 2014 it affected her eyesight so she had to special glasses because she was getting double vision. got better, but then she lost all her ability to, she used to knit, she used to read, she used to do lots of things for herself, and she lost that ability and I think that made her really angry. Mum also had the vascular dementia, so that does affect your personality I think, to some degree. Yes, yes it does. But how, it changed her as a person? Yes. Less able to cope with things and more snappy? Aggressive. Aggressive. Aggressive. Could be. Not all the time. Could be. And accusations, you know, if you, you know, she said, I think I went there one day and she said to me, that's Sandra stealing from me. And I'm thinking, oh God, here we go. And I just said to her, Mum, I am Sandra. Yeah. And she went, oh, it's the other one. Okay. And she just said, oh, yeah. And it's little things she used to say, and I used to have heart failure because if she come in here and she was, you know, she'd been particularly awkward. I used to say mum don't stop it. And then she used to say I'll tell social services you hit me. But those are the little things that you get. Advice to a carer or a health care professional dealing with someone like mum, what would you say? Patients, pull them up on what they've said because it can you know it can lead to other things so you need to say is that what you're saying you know do you know what you're saying because they are aware they're not totally gone you know they do know because she used to have a smile and I used to know then she was playing up but it's just patience. Probably varies from patient to patient but yeah there was a level of awareness in mum not all the time but sometimes yes and you could pick that up yes I mean you could you could talk she would talk to you normally and then all of a sudden she would talk rubbish I mean when she came out Paddington she couldn't talk at all she lost the ability to converse she didn't talk at all so it was listening and then you would get a moment you know like it would be like a small window where she would be coherent so you have to think what she was doing or what she wanted so we used to say do you want to drink you know do you want your dinner do you want to go out and she would not but she didn't lose the ability to talk and that's even worse because that's frustrating because we got you got to forethink what they want hmm you should sort of be on the ball does she want this does she want that and then you have to ask the questions do you want Do you want this? Do you want that? Okay.