Like many, I pre-record most TV these days, so don't watch many adverts. But having bumped into this campaign a couple of times now I had to log in to commend everyone involved in having the courage to portray part of the stark reality of dementia. For the first time I feel like a campaign is telling it like it is for many (most?) of us. I can see why some may consider is as potentially unhelpful as the 80's AIDs campaign (stigmatising and frightening) but where has the softly, softly approach got us?
The problem, as ever, with this condition, is that there's no cure and the only hope you have is that you or your family member's going to be in the (tiny?) minority whose dementia fades you away slowly and gently, leaving your dignity and intellect intact for as long as possible. So whereas it's possible to engage positively with a cancer campaign -- where there's hope in many, many cases and occasional medical miracles -- getting the general public to engage with something so depressing is hard. Far easier for them to just dismiss 'that gloomy ad about that thing nobody wants to think about' and tune out mentally until an advert for ice cream wakes them up again. That's exactly what I'd have done, I'm sure, until dementia came knocking on our family's door with a sledgehammer. Then a wrecking ball.
But I'm a firm believer that the time for sugar coating -- no matter how well intentioned -- dementia's public face is over. On the kitchen floor at the moment is a newspaper from 2016 that Mum had in a heap in the garage that's useful now the dog's very elderly and almost as challenging in the loo department as Mum. There's an article which caught my eye this morning saying how scientists were optimistic that within ten years there would be drugs to halt dementia's progress.
Anyone have any faith we're only a few more years away from that? No, thought not. No harm in hoping, but in the mean time the years tick by and the sledgehammer keeps hammering doors down, putting thousands more on the dementia treadmill, each family having to learn the hard lessons for themselves... you're on your own to negotiate a complex system of benefits and paperwork and inadequate support options and general headaches while trying not to lose the plot yourself.
Yes, local reps from the AZ Society and the like can be wonderful signposts, but.. But I still remember the day the lovely lady came round to see us and talk very calmly and helpfully to Mum and I about her diagnosis. I also remember Mum saying horrible things about her the moment she'd gone, telling me what a barsteward I was for letting her in, then tearing up the leaflets and throwing out the booklets. It was one of my first 'trials by emotional fire'. The AZ rep was lovely, and gave me the feeling I wasn't on my own trying to stop Mum's life melting down completely. But within minutes were were back on our own and out the door "going home" again... the treadmill continued revolving.
Help is there, but it's never for long, never enough, and never there at 2am when your Mum's trying to kick you out of the house because she doesn't know who you are. And yet as Mum sits there stroking her teddy, oblivious to most of what goes on around her now, and only capable of hobbling back and forth to the loo and bed with my extreme support, I'd go back to that early chaos in a heartbeat. She was angry and confused, fearless and terrified, crashing from one UTI to the next, furious at me one minute, grateful the next, off out the house at the drop of a hat to go who knows where, but... But she was still Mum.
Now she's just Mum-shaped, and my job is to stay sane and make her end as dignified as possible.
Ultimately, each person with dementia and their family is on their own in this, and that's what this TV campaign portrays in a stark, but IMO necessary way. Nothing will change until we address it head on and be the sledgehammer rather than be sledgehammered. We've worked miracles curing or helping so many conditions. But if we only live long enough to get dementia, that's a curse, not a miracle. Society needs to face up to that, because there is no crueller condition.
Reading my extended, self-indulgent rambling is possibly equally cruel. But I can at least log out again for a while and cure that!
Anyway, it's a well done from me. No campaign or social support network will ever be perfect, or anywhere close, but as the NHS struggles to get back on top of cancer and other conditions, and as the government has to face up to the dreadful financial burden covid has placed on the next decade or more, everyone's going to have to fight for their cause a bit harder. I doubt there will be time for subtlety if anything's to change. So thank you for trying something different.
I think my Mum would thank you too, if she could.