George says ‘that advertisment’ is causing so much damage and we have to do something about it

Dear Dementia Diary, it’s George in Shropshire, again.

I am sitting outside, lovely, probably the warmest most lovely day of the year so far. Sitting outside listening to a few birds here and there.

I’ve just been in a meeting, … earlier on today about, oh, about some training, it’s a research project I was involved training Social Prescribers to understand dementia better.

And, it was suggested that we might consider using the training provided by Alzheimer’s Society and I’ve got to say that I, and I’m not alone, I know I’m not alone with this, I baulked at doing that, I really did.

Every time Alzheimer’s Society is mentioned at the moment, I just want to turn off. I just think they are such complete basket cases at the moment. I have said before that I think their website is really, really useful, it’s a great way to find information out, all sorts of stuff in a cleverly worked out model.

But, that film advert that they have returned to, still putting out about dementia being about dying again and again and again, it’s just making all of us not want to do, have anything to do with Alzheimer’s Society anymore.

And I know that there are plenty of carers who I have met who have had the same sort of appalled response when watching that … television film advertisement.

You know, people rush to turn the TV off immediately it comes on, either for fear of themselves getting upset or for fear of their loved one getting upset.

It’s just so appalling and I think we should take a stand actually, a lot of us have already effectively but we should more formally take a stand to say “We will not work with the Alzheimer’s Society” in fact we will campaign, well not campaign, but we will, we will stop organisations and networks who we know from using them as well, if there is, if there is a choice.

The fact is I think they should really suffer for what they have done and they are probably coining in contributions from people who look at it and don’t know much about dementia but just think “oh shit, we better do something about this, how awful, let’s give some money”.

But for everybody living with the disease, it’s just appalling. I mean, you know, we will all admit that we change, we are still inherently the same person but people around us will see different people. They will see us, you know, losing skills, they will see us slowing down, they will see us wobbling around a bit. They will see us finding difficulty cooking or cleaning or whatever it might be but they don’t, they really don’t see us die again and again and again.

If they think we’ve died, it’s probably because they hadn’t seen us for a year and its Christmas and they’ve come to see us and they want everything to be happy and joyful and low and behold we are not, because we have got dementia.

We are still alive, we’re still living our life but it’s not the life other people want to see in us, so they say ‘we’ve died’. That is not acceptable and I’ll just end by restating I would love to see a more formalised boycott of Alzheimer’s Society at the moment because I think they stink.

So, with that I’ll say goodbye.