Love Life Loss - A Roller Coaster of Poetry Volume 2: Days with Dementia

By Kate Swaffer

"What do you do with a diagnosis of dementia? And especially younger-onset dementia? Kate Swaffer responds with love, life and torrents of words. Some of the words show loneliness and fear, exclusion, apprehension. But her strong theme is how to be a vigorous involved participant in the world of light, gardens, cats and, above all, peo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debbie Lee
• Release date: Aug 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781760411862

Book preview

Love Life Loss - A Roller Coaster of Poetry Volume 2

Love Life Loss - A Roller Coaster of Poetry Volume 2

Days with Dementia

Kate Swaffer

Ginninderra Press

Contents

Copyright

Foreword

Days with Dementia

Love Life Loss – A Roller Coaster of Poetry: Volume 2 – Days with Dementia

ISBN 978 1 76041 186 2

Copyright © text Kate Swaffer 2016

---

All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be sent to the publisher at the address below.

---

First published 2016 by

Ginninderra Press

PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide 5015

www.ginninderrapress.com.au

Foreword

The first time I met dementia, and knew it by that chilling name, was on a youth group excursion to a nursing home when I was fourteen. The shock and anguish of that day was such that it drove me to later become an aged care attendant, and then a nurse, working for a total of seven years in hospitals, nursing homes and community-based health care.

Of the many strange sights, sounds and other sensations of that first, life-shaping encounter, I recall most strongly the eyes – steely blue-grey – of a woman who sat and muttered, on endless shuffle replay, ‘I can’t believe it! The nerve of them, sitting there at that beautiful piano – with sandwiches! Dropping crumbs! Getting crumbs in the piano!’

There was no piano and no sandwich eater. The nursing home staff simply rolled their eyes and shrugged. Some even snickered or made jokes among themselves. At the time, I thought them heartless. Years later, after fleeing the system I had longed so deeply to change, I would at last understand. Their behaviour was a coping mechanism, for those who