Jacqui explains how sensory overload affects her.

Hello, it’s Jacqui from Stockport.

Well, I think the rain has stopped now. It’s been chucking it down for days! Anyway, my friend that I share the house with — we bought the house together — she said, long ago, before lockdown, she used to say to me as I went to Stockport, “are you going to stop and have a coffee?” And I’d say no. And then I’d come home.

But she would always be going up to the precinct here to have a coffee. I don’t understand this, we’ve got coffee at home, Why can’t you come and visit each other? Don’t understand why people just don’t pop in and visit each other and have a coffee.

Anyway we were talking last night, and she said, “you’re very unsociable, you know.” I said oh, why? “Cause,” she said, “when you go to Stockport you don’t pop in and have a coffee.” I said, but I’ve told you, it’s too noisy. I hear every little clink of the cups, the machine — the coffee machine, the whoosh, the people talking, everything is just bashes in my head and I come out and I am exhausted. And she just looked at me.

You know, people don’t understand the sensory overload that we get with dementia. They think we, I don’t know, make it up or something. It’s not that I’m unsociable. If you said to me, “would you like to go down to the park, and have a coffee or a tea?” I’d be fine with that. But to go to a busy place like the precinct, and everyone’s chatting and crashing and banging and door open and closing, just drives my sensory overload overloaded.

She doesn’t get it that that’s just so tiring, so painful for me. But if I went to the garden center where it’s quiet, that’d be nice. Or if I went down to Etherow park and I had a coffee there, that would be nice. It’s not that I’m unsociable.

Bye bye everybody.