A stranger on the sofa

I have a friend I have been having dinner with for more years than either of us can count. Every time, I ask how his mum is. Every time, he says fine. Then, across the rest of the evening, the word ‘fine’ quietly comes apart.

His mum answered the door recently to a man selling something, loft insulation or similar. She let him in.

His dad came home to find the two of them on the sofa, having tea, mid-conversation, as though this were the most ordinary thing in the world. To his mum, it was.

His mum has no diagnosis. She is not, as far as anyone official is concerned, anything other than a lady in her late seventies who is a bit forgetful.

A woman who no longer distinguishes between a stranger and a guest is past the place where "a bit forgetful" comfortably sits, and her husband now carries that knowledge into every hour he spends out of the house.

One of the assumptions almost everyone makes about dementia is that support begins with a diagnosis. First the answer, then the help.

What if that is the wrong way round?

If a diagnosis can take months or years to arrive, and for many people it never arrives at all, should support really wait until afterwards?

This edition is about the gap between concern and certainty, and what families can do while they are stuck inside it.