I've been sitting on this reply for a day or so, and wasn't going to send it, but I think I need to show a bit of the bravery you're showing since your diagnosis.
So here goes...
I think you raise a very interesting point, and having a clear and obvious distinction between us might be helpful. I just went to see if I could change my user name to "Andrew_McP [carer]" but couldn't find that option. I might be missing a trick.
Anyway, I'm going to be honest -- but hopefully not disrespectful -- and say that until recently I didn't realise that many folk with dementia were, er, self-aware enough (especially for extended periods into a diagnosis) to be active on the internet. But more people may be getting diagnosed earlier now, and since I noticed folk like yourself and Countryboy posting it's made me worry a lot more about some of our brutally frank discussions and confessions as carers.
It's possible that many folk with dementia will be discouraged by browsing some of our threads and choose to avoid the forum altogether. And yet as a carer I've never needed somewhere to offload to and learn from more than I've needed this place! Life for both dementia 'sufferers' (a term we're discouraged from using no matter how appropriate it might be to many of our circumstances) and their loved ones is rarely easy and often thoroughly miserable. But not in all cases, as you clearly illustrate. That gives us all hope, which can be a bit thin on the ground sometimes.
I know my mother's journey was never self aware beyond being furious with the world for being so confusing, and furious at me for 'forcing' my help upon her. She was capable of writing short, messy emails at the peak of her powers, but that kind of thing left her very early in her decline. But there will be a generational thing at play there as well, and more people will probably be more tech-capable for longer as time goes on; tech will be more ingrained in their normal abilities. Whatever 'normal' means!
Everyone's experience is different, thankfully. And I've strayed way off the original point of your observation. Which makes me feel, as I often do, that I ought to delete this and simply say "Yes, you're right!"
But I've been contemplating saying something like this for a while, and this is as good a place to get it off my chest. I hope! It may be that while thinking about ways of identifying ourselves clearly, we might also want to think about a fully private area for those with dementia, where they can complain about the rest of us and get their frustrations off
their chests.
I do worry about segregation and complexity though... and about whether I'll ever stop typing! I really do need to take my own advice about complexity and stop thinking out loud on forums. But dementia is a condition which challenges the very nature of being human, so it's only natural that we wrestle with it. I just happen to wrestle in public... which might just get me 'awrested' one day. ;-)
