“I seem to live in a state of constant anxiety”
– by Agnes Houston
“On Saturday, I decided I wanted to make my favourite carrot and lentil soup, which I make all the time and I know the recipe off by heart. Or, I used to know the recipe off by heart. I started making the soup, and then the forgetfulness kicked in. What happened next is, and it was really quite scary for a while because as you know I live alone, I started to panic. You know I’m very fortunate, my daughter Donna is a nurse, she pre-empted all these stages, and she has written down the instructions for a lot of what I do at the cooker. And I remembered to stop, sit down, take some deep breaths, and go back to my task at hand – getting the recipe book out that Donna has made for me and look at it, and I chuckled to myself. I was forgetting the main ingredient. But on we went, and soup got finished, and thankfully it tasted really really nice. Maybe not the same as I always make my carrot and lentil soup, but still nice just the same – full of nutrition and goodness.
What does it feel like when you forget these things? What does it feel like when I know that the slow progression is creeping in and getting more and more frequent? Frightening. Scary. I doubt myself, don’t want to look too far into the future. It’s only because Donna and I have been honest, and taking things, and putting solutions in to make things better for me. We’re not pretending, we know these incidents are happening more frequently, we know things are getting scarier day by day. We’ve even spoken about me maybe getting some medication for the panic that I am feeling more and more now. I seem to live in a state of constant anxiety, of not being able to cope with crossing the road, going shopping, having a shower. The day to day things have been more and more stressful and causing me panics.
But, with the help of Donna, the panic is not overwhelming. Or doesn’t become overwhelming often. But when it is overwhelming, you gotta believe that I’m inconsolable. So yes, this self-managing at home is no joke. And I really don’t know where this is going, and if the government and the professionals have really thought it through.”
For more from Agnes, click here.
