Finally, after four years of heartache we have a diagnosis for mum - FTD.
Mum had an appointment at Walton yesterday - none of her files or brain scans had been sent over and they had no idea why she was there - not a good start. Unbelievably it's the first appointment I didn't attend - my sister offered to go as I was so stressed after last week!
As it turned out the consultant decided to start from scratch with the assessments and asked dad and my sister to fill in a questionnaire which was new as the previous consultants have never been especially bothered with our opinion.
He confirmed the diagnosis, looked appalled at the fact that the previous consultant had said it couldn't be FTD because it wasn't connected to speech.
Mum did not react well to the news and starting shouting and tried to make a run for it so they pacified her by telling her it wasn't really dementia.
There is no treatment and he said he would have to refer us back to the previous consultant. I'm not happy about this because she clearly doesn't know about FTD so how exactly is she meant to help us?
No one has talked about what we do now - do we need to contact social services to discuss carers etc?
On the plus side dad has taken the bit between his teeth and seems to have finally accepted the diagnosis. He is taking leave from work for a while to buy us time to figure out what to do and he has accepted that mum should no longer drive and is working out how to take the car off her - big sigh of relief to that!
So what do we do now?
Mum had an appointment at Walton yesterday - none of her files or brain scans had been sent over and they had no idea why she was there - not a good start. Unbelievably it's the first appointment I didn't attend - my sister offered to go as I was so stressed after last week!
As it turned out the consultant decided to start from scratch with the assessments and asked dad and my sister to fill in a questionnaire which was new as the previous consultants have never been especially bothered with our opinion.
He confirmed the diagnosis, looked appalled at the fact that the previous consultant had said it couldn't be FTD because it wasn't connected to speech.
Mum did not react well to the news and starting shouting and tried to make a run for it so they pacified her by telling her it wasn't really dementia.
There is no treatment and he said he would have to refer us back to the previous consultant. I'm not happy about this because she clearly doesn't know about FTD so how exactly is she meant to help us?
No one has talked about what we do now - do we need to contact social services to discuss carers etc?
On the plus side dad has taken the bit between his teeth and seems to have finally accepted the diagnosis. He is taking leave from work for a while to buy us time to figure out what to do and he has accepted that mum should no longer drive and is working out how to take the car off her - big sigh of relief to that!
So what do we do now?