Dory feels well supported on her travels.

Hi, this is Dory and I’m doing a diary about what I did this past week

I travelled down to, or up, I don’t know if it’s up or down, I’m not very good at geography!
I travelled to London on Tuesday because I was speaking at the Royal College of Occupational Therapy with Fran Hamilton and Vesna, I can’t pronounce the second name, but she is a lovely lady and we were speaking at the college on the Wednesday.

But I want to say how, on the Tuesday I got to London earlyish so I thought I’d go on an open top bus tour of London. Anyway, It was very slow, the bus, because it was stuck in traffic and I decided to get off and walk across Tower Bridge. I got out Google maps and I thought I’d find myself, find the way myself to the hotel. I had support, I was by myself but I had, you know, the contact numbers on my phone of the supporters. So I thought “Well, if I do, if the worst comes to the worst and I do get into any difficulty, they’re there to phone”

So, It was a lovely day, I found my way to Tower bridge, I bought a glass of wine and sat by the river, people watching. And I was just thinking, while I was sitting there, how wonderful it was that I was, “Look at me”, I was thinking, “sitting here in the sun, in London”. I’d never have done that three, four years ago, I don’t think I’d have done it before I had dementia. I just felt free and I felt like a person again.

I had support, I knew the support was there but I also had my independence because some organisations or people, they support you but they also sort of, don’t give you, .. take your independence away as well. So it was a really good balance.

And I found my way to the hotel, I just asked, I have the confidence now to ask people.
But, it was such a good day, and such a good feeling. I know it’s not always like that but I thought I’d take that positive risk and if not, if it all went wrong I could just phone up, I had two contact numbers so I could just phone those or got a taxi, so I had three choices so, but I did enjoy just going around.

And the event went very well as well, and great feedback from the Occupational therapists, and Keith Oliver was there, he didn’t speak on our panel, he was in on another session. There was Vesna and myself and Fran Hamilton chaired the panel
Oh and there was two carers from TIDE also
So that was an interesting day
OK, bye!