“Sometimes when I speak, my mind wanders off in a totally random direction”

– by Chris Forse

“Hi it’s Chris here, I’ve not made any reports lately. I’ve been finding it a bit difficult, I knew what I wanted to say… then I’d go upstairs to send a report but often then I’d put it off, finding reasons to do it later or at another time because I was finding I just couldn’t always string the words together.  My mind was going blank despite what I’d written down, then it became a bit of a big deal for me and although I wanted to send in reports I guess I’d lost confidence but i didn’t want to admit it especially towards myself. So now Carol has come up with a cunning plan.  Luckily she’s a trained touch typist so now I sit and talk about what I want to say, how I feel etc

She types it as I speak, she sometimes prompt me when I go blank. And after I finish talking she asks me how I felt about what I’d said and when I thought about and said what I feel she can go back type those words in the right place.

She can also put some of my random thoughts into a more logical order, but good thing is I know it’s all my words, it’s what I think and it’s what I want to say. So the plan is when I start to do my report for the Dementia Diaries and if my mind goes blank or if I can’t think of the words I glance down at the script and then get back on course which really helps.

Sometimes when I speak, my mind wanders off in a totally random direction, then I totally lose my train of thought so having my script to refer to is great.

We make a good team so here we go,we’ve done this today ….I shall be sending two reports about my driving later on or probably tomorrow, bye.”

Listen to the rest of Chris’s diary here