27th July 2011 Wednesday
The clinical psychologist we saw yesterday - he’s not the sort of man you can hug - but I wanted to - said all the things we longed to hear. He saw us a year ago and remembered all our details - he referred us to his friend the consultant neurologist who gave us the news about semantic dementia.
He said things like imagine your brain is a giant filing cabinet and someone has torn out the indexing system - all the information is there but the executive controller has gone AWOL. So there is nothing to make the connections - my husband knows what rough cider is but if you say pass the scrumpy he won’t know what you mean.
The bearded psychologist says think of it like an invisible disability. Not like a disease. If you lose a leg it doesn’t mean you can’t walk - but you do have to adapt, find alternatives. There are things we can do. The air felt cleaner and lighter when we came out of his office.
Today was a blackcurrant day. Tonight there is a plastic tub of rich ice cream in the freezer - a dreamy creamy parfait rippled with rivulets of blackcurrant puree dark as claret wine. And six proud jars of glistening blackcurrant jam on the counter. The kitchen smells like a sweet factory.
It makes me happy to cook for the people I love. A dear friend emailed today and said what makes her really happy is getting good news about friends and family. The good news is that although nothing has changed we have a different word in our lives. Now disability sounds full of hope and purpose. Whereas disease is an eating you up word - a dying word.
No comments:
Post a Comment