Page 42 - Changes and Challenges

Dementia
Changes and Challenges
Language and Communication.

Language and communication cover a wide area that both involves sensory
inputs and interpretation, memory and a wide variety of cognitive skills and
motor functions. All things that are affected by Dementia.

My abilities in this area are slowing becoming more of a challenge. This is very
apparent to me, but it is often downplayed by other people. This is for two
reasons, firstly (this is me being kind) they don’t know me or have had enough
experience with me to see the changes. Secondly (and this is me be honest),
they don’t see any problems with my language as I still have a deeper and
wider vocabulary than them and can often better express myself.

I find it now better, but not necessarily easier to communicate through more
than one medium, for example I often will produce small videos and
animations to explain a point and am now trying to record some audio in the
form of pod casts the record my ideas and to have them available when
needed. Assuming I will remember them and be able to access them when I
need them. I used this technique yesterday, having been engaged in several e-
mail exchanges over a few days, I realized I was not able to get across a small
but important point. That’s when I remembered a video, I had prepared some
time ago on a related subject, I e-mailed the links and received a replay in due
cause indicating that I was understood.
I have been using a computer for my word processing needs since the late
1980’s and am relatively adept at using Microsoft Office. What has made this
easier is that since about the fourth version of MS Word (for DOS) the
command structure, and menus etc have been consistent, that’s not to say
they haven’t changed, but they have shown a remarkable consistence
compared to what had gone before. For example, the À (F1 key) is always
associated with Help, compare this to what was the leading word processor of
the late 1980’s where Â+Â brought up help. I never had formal
keyboarding skills training, but my skills have perfectly adequate to transcribe
my thoughts to ‘paper’. Lately I find I will spend a considerable amount of my
time correcting ‘typos’. Typos are literally what happens, as I will often type

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