Dementia and General Election 2010 - Part One

The Alzheimers Society wants to put dementia research, treatment and care at the heart of this year's General Election Campaign. I support this initiative wholeheartedly.

I must declare an interest: I am suffering from the early effects of vascular dementia, a by product of polycythemia vera - a bone marrow disease. My prognosis is good 9-13 years and I am in touch with someone in Oxford, a Classics specialist, who has managed her condition for some 15 years.

A very fine person, the talented blogger and wit, Ron Broxted of Independent Minds, once messaged me "there's nothing wrong with your mind". It was kind of him and something I needed to hear at that time.

Dementia afflicts different people in different ways and at different depths of the mind. My friend in Oxford and I both have access to very large vocabularies and both of us read and speak several languages, blessed with impeccable grammar from an early age - we can both fake it in public, always find a synonym and get by.

Yet dementia bedevils our every waking moment. A wordsmith and language teacher all my life, I have been blessed with impeccable spelling. No more, I use a dictionary constantly and write by hand every blog, every tweet and every SMS. Even then I make many a slip between hand and eye and have problems seeing and copying tinyurls!

I have huge difficulties in concentration - which is why twitter is a god send - I think in bursts of 140 characters. This text is a huge effort and what once I could have written in a single draft in half an hour, now takes several re-writes and several hours.

I have difficulty in groups of 3 or more people, especially if two talk at the same time. I can no longer watch a 90 minute movie, my mind wanders and I literally 'lose the plot'. An hour ago, earlier today, short term memory is shot.