Keith on Being busy and living well

Keith Oliver.  This week diary entry from me is around living well with dementia, and using the last week and this week as an example. 
 
For me being busy is important to living well, I hate inertia and apathy.  I think they’re the best allies for dementia.  If we take last week for example there was a really interesting meeting at the department of health where we looked to establish the dementia statements and to be used by the government and other agencies working alongside them.  We also had a really constructive meeting with the young dementia network, where we are making inroads into using the GP toolkit and document to help GP’s with working with patients who have young onset dementia.  Another highlight was coffee and chat with April and Liz when we were able to talk about the dreams and visions project and a potential new writing project that I may do in 2018 and I’ll tell you more about that as it unfolds over in subsequent months. 
 
Looking now to this week, I’m keep that dementia doesn’t dominate everything that I do, so today Rosemary and I are going to a garden club meeting, which will be a lovely talk about gardens; and on Wednesday we are part of a family history group which we joined soon after I was diagnosed, 6 or 7 years ago, and we meet once a month in the winter, autumn and winter months. We talk about family history and we put the world to rights really during those discussions around a broad range of topics, it’s a lovely event, nothing at all to do with dementia.
 
Then on Thursday we are looking to meet again to talk about the film script project which is advancing now with a £10,000 grant from the lottery, where we are looking for round about 10 people who will write a film script on their own, with support from tuition, and students from local university.  And talking of students on Friday the will close with me giving a talk to around about 60 OT students at the local university .  Lastly just looking back to last week we had our forget me not monthly meeting on Friday, which by and large was a very constructive meeting and generally positive meeting.  There is quite a lot of angst around the PIP issue, understandably so, and we are looking to make progress with that, both with the group and certain individuals within the group.  We know that DEEP are very much behind us on that, and we need them as an ally for sure.
 
I think I’ll close there and get on with something in readiness for this afternoon’s event that I’m going to which I said is the garden club meeting.  I hope that gives you a sense of how one person is attempting to live well with dementia: by being busy and doing a range of activities all of which are engaging, interesting and usually very positive.  Thank you.