Most people with dementia are also living with other illnesses and conditions. A lifetime of farm-work has left Stephen with a painful legacy.

Stephen: Yeah, hi. I’m just been up on me, I’m lying on me bed at the moment. I’ve just done my Youtube video, Stephen’s Dementia Diaries. Another video on there and yeah, my right elbow’s given up now um, because I’ve got arthritis on both elbow joints. It’s just yeah, causing a lot of problems at the moment. I’ve had to re-adapt my bed again to accommodate that problem that, helps, helps a lot.

I just think of these different ways you can help yourself, because the last three or four years I’ve been pulling myself up always with one arm and the arthritis in my arm is just wasting me bone away I think, such a shame but I guess because I was on farms, farm work. That was my career and because of all the windy weather up the mountain over the years and hard work it destroyed most of my, it’s left me with a lot of arthritis joints, osteo it’s not rheumatoid it’s osteo wear and tear and yeah it’s-its not good but there you go, it’s what it is isn’t it. We cope, I cope with it the best way I can and if you can get something the eas-easy way to do things, then that’s the best thing to do but you know I guess every individual’s different but there you go.

Anyway I’ll be on my Dementia Diaries linkup tomorrow morning. I look forward to that, I always look forward to that because that’s the best meeting in the whole week. It’s really good. I love the people on there as well, they’re y’know really good. Anyway, I’ll leave it now and catch you on the next video, on the next audio.