
Is this the same person?
By Marion Foreman. Published 2020-04-30
BOLD-LivingLast week we introduced Robin Thomson and Shoko, here Marion catches up with Robin to understand more about his and Shoko's journey
One of the most often said things by those caring for someone with dementia is that ‘they just want their husband / wife / Mum / Dad back.This is something that features strongly in the wonderful book that Robin Thomson wrote about life with his much-loved wife, Shoko. In ‘Living with Alzheimer’s – a Love Story’ Robin tells it as it is, the joys and the struggles – a book that will definitely help anyone who is trying to care for someone who is not always the person that they once were.Robin tells us that ‘Shoko had become very different.’ Both Robin and their daughter, Sarah, felt sad that Shoko ‘isn’t as she used to be’.This was a cause of distress and unhappiness and was very unsettling. This was Robin’s wife and Sarah’s mother, this was Shoko, but it wasn’t always the Shoko that they knew and loved. All their usual conversations and ways of being together didn’t seem to work anymore.Robin is an author and he turned to a book to help him. John Zeisel’s book called ‘I’m still here’. Robin told me how, in this book, Zeisel talks about the person with Alzheimer’s ‘still being a person with whom we can relate but that it’s a different relationship.’ He tells his readers that we can’t go back to the old relationship, but we can build a new relationship, and this feels like the most important point to understand. Zeisel says that we can help someone with Alzheimer’s by the way that we relate to them. Robin found this book enormously helpful and shared with me some of the key points that he turned to again and again.Zeisel looks at what he calls the ‘four A’s of Alzheimer’s’ - four ways for us to relate differently but meaningfully. It’s worth pausing to look at these in some detail – they helped Robin so much that he wanted me to share them with anyone who might be wondering what to do for the best to live and care for someone with Alzheimer’s.