KEY POINTS:
Following its ad on TV, a certain car company seems to have legitimised the use of the word "bugger".
Fantasy writer Terry Pratchett gave even more meaning to the word when he described his diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease as an "embuggerance".
You can pick up a lot reading
the daily papers and recently there was a narrow column with the heading "How to get a jail birdie" which began: "A prison sentence may cost you your liberty, but your golf needn't suffer."
It went on to tell us that two prisons have made grassed areas available to inmates who are keen on maintaining their golfing handicaps.
In the same paper was another heading: "No fantasy hero in Alzheimer's world".
Here we are given the sad news that writer Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's disease.
For those of you who don't know the finer details of this devastating disorder, it is one of the conditions that comes under the heading of dementia. It results in loss of the ability to think, reason and remember, affects language and communication, and diminishes the ability to manage one's own activities of daily living.
All those things we usually do independently every day.
This is the disease that not so long ago was referred to as "senile dementia", a disease of the elderly. Keep reading the article on Terry Pratchett and you see that he is only 59. That brings up your shock level, especially when you realise that worldwide an increasing number of people in their 40s, 50s and 60s are being diagnosed with a dementia.
So here we have the dilemma. It appears that you can make a conscious choice to break the law, get a prison sentence and then be rewarded with the opportunity to maintain your recreational and social activities all paid out of our taxes.
On the other hand, you can be handed down a diagnosis of dementia and be sentenced to a life of diminishing abilities, for which there is no reward and little taxpayer money available to provide the sort of support needed to keep you involved in a purposeful and meaningful life.
I attended a presentation to the Ministry of Health in Auckland a couple of years ago where a deputation presented a proposal to the ministry for funding of activity programmes for younger people with dementia and those with early onset dementia. Programmes that are age appropriate and maintain as much independence and dignity for people living with dementia as possible.
As part of the deputation, there was a man in his late 50s who had Alzheimer's disease, and his wife. He asked the ministry people if they knew what the weather had been like during the winter that had just passed. They had been too busy to notice.
The man told them it had been wet and cold and that he knew because he had sat day after day knowing what he wanted to do, knowing that with support he could still do it, but without the ability to get up and get going.
One of the cruel things about having dementia is that the ability to be motivated can be compromised.
We all know that a car can be in good running order but if you don't turn on the key, you go nowhere.
Our brains are like that, too. There is a part in the frontal lobes that gets us up and going and needs to be turned on just like the car.
For a good number of people with dementia this becomes affected and no matter how much they wish to be involved, they cannot switch their starter motor on and so they just sit there.
Imagine living that day after day - a recipe for despondency and depression if ever there was one.
How is it that we can condone the provision of greens for prisoners but we can't provide the low-cost recreational and social activity solutions that would show people with dementia that we value them?
Buggered if I know! But, it is election year and we can put our politicians on notice.
* Joy Simpson is immediate past chairwoman of Alzheimers New Zealand.
