I left my partner in day care for most of Monday as I had stuff to do - on my way to collect him in the car the thought popped into my head that this disease is the most unimaginable nightmare. Any physical illness you can deal with, you can still talk to the person, they generally don't change in their personalities but dementia is the end of everything - it's a death without death, it's a no hope illness. Forgive me for being blunt but I keep asking myself what's the point? We carers try to stay upbeat, we adjust to every new deterioration, I think we are generally just too busy to even think about it but just read on here what people have to deal with - spouses who no longer know that they have a wife/husband, incontinence and double incontinence, wandering PWD, lack of sleep, verbal and sometimes physical aggression, being responsible for every thing from cleaning to finances to personal care.....and lots more besides. I don't have time to cut my toe nails let alone go to the hairdressers or the opticians, though I find time for my partner to go to the barbers, get a shave, dentist, GP or whatever. I do now have carer help to take him out for a walk and some hours of day care but even so, the house is a mess, the washing piles up, he's now taken to blowing his nose on the towels if I don't watch him. Everyone I know is planning a holiday, friends off to the UAE and Costa Rica, someone just back from the Canary Islands and the Caribbean .... there won't be any more holidays for us, it's too stressful for me and too confusing for him. All of us devote so much time and energy to our PWD, keeping them clean, fed, active, entertained ...... but I ask again in all seriousness 'what's the point'? Because we have no choice? Because we love them? Because we couldn't live with ourselves if we let them suffer? Is dementia on the increase? I never came across anyone with dementia when I was younger, now everyone you speak to knows someone who had/has it.