Making Life Work With Dementia

A full calendar, a positive outlook, planning ahead and alerts on her iPad – one inspiring woman tells Anna Moore how she copes

- Anna Moore

Set on a quiet street in a small village in the UK, Wendy Mitchell’s house is the one with the forget-me-not tiles on the wall. She put them up herself so she could tell which house is hers.

Step inside, straight on to the kitchen, and you’ll notice the cupboards are marked with photos of the contents, just as the wardrobe upstairs has photos of the clothes that hang inside. They help Wendy remember. While the toilet doors are marked with a ‘t’, the kitchen has no doors at all. Wendy removed them because, when they were closed, she’d forget what lay behind them.

Every room is in perfect order, with everything in the correct place so Wendy knows where it is. Even Wendy looks immaculate, though she lives alone and her home has no mirrors. Mirrors can be confusing – she can’t always tell where a room ends or begins – and Wendy’s also preparing for the day when she won’t recognise her reflection. “I’ll live in an earlier world,” she explains, “so to see an older person looking back will confuse me. I do without mirrors now so it won’t be such a shock in the future.”

Wendy, now 62, was diagnosed with early-onset dementia nearly five years ago. She calls the illness a “thief in the night” – she can no longer work, run, drive, bake, use the phone – but still,her life has somehow got bigger and busier. She lives alone, unaided. She travels independently. Her daily blog is read across the world. And she has written a book, a rare account of how dementia feels on the inside, and how, if you’re determined and have a system, it’s possible to live a life full to the brim.

Before her diagnosis, Wendy says, she was known as the “most organised person on the planet”. Her husband had left when her two daughters were young, and she worked in the health sector. She always coped.