Jacqui has been raising awareness

Hello, Diary, it’s Jacqui. I was asked to go to Stepping Hill Hospital. They were doing some training on dementia, and as I’m part of the educate group, and I have young-onset Alzheimer’s, I was asked by Mark to go along. So I did and I took a few paintings  that I’ve done. I told them about how I was diagnosed, how it took so long, and my journey so far. But what they found was interesting was when my friend Carol goes away, as she stocks up the fridge and the cupboards and everything for me, when she gets back, she says, ‘What did you eat?’ because she doesn’t see anything’s gone. And I say, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ We found that by by stocking everything up and putting it all in the fridge and that, it was overwhelming for my brain to make decisions. And I’d open the fridge and go, ‘Oh, too much information.’ I’d open the cupboards, and unless it was biscuits or crisps, I couldn’t decide. So my PA suggested that we have a big whiteboard and we write down the days that I’m alone and what meals I’m going to have. And then we decide – we tick them off when I’ve had them. So when I was giving the talk yesterday, people were very interested that I could get on an airplane, go over to Belfast to go and see a stranger and do some art community workshops with her, but yet I couldn’t look at the fridge and do my own meals. So that was quite interesting for them. It just showed them practictically how the brain does and doesn’t work. Okay! See you – bye! Bye-bye!