Patrick J McTaggart

Hello

Over the last three years I have been a full time carer to my Mum and Dad, my Dad having dementia.

If you or someone you know has Alzheimers or any form of dementia, or are a caregiver for anyone who does then I hope my book will be of value to you.

As a carer for Dad I know how difficult both physically and emotionally dementia can be for both the person who has it and close family particularly those who are carers day to day. Relationships can be strained but also strengthened and I truly believe that love conquers all. Despite the heartache, the dementia journey can still provide gifts of memories that will last forever.

Very often family carers are forced to learn as they go. My nature in times such as these leads me to dip into books by professionals with experience and knowledge of dementia to see if I can find anything to help me. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. Often books can be quite long and time to research on the other hand very short. It was only by chance that I saw on-line some quotes about dementia and these really hit the mark with me. They were succinct and seemed to understand what I was going through. Researching these a bit further I found that many quotes by people who either had dementia or experience of it with a family member had a clarity at both an emotional level and also in terms of giving much needed advice. They were also very easy to read often providing simple lessons from short poems, quotes or songs.

Having never written a poem in my life before suddenly I started writing poems, the first time being in the middle of the night. I found that they helped me by putting down on paper how I was feeling including my emotions and helped me better reflect on and better understand certain situations.

Over time as I wrote more poems, usually early in the morning, I started to think that perhaps some of the things I learned from our dementia journey may be of some small help to others on the same journey or who are about to start it. Poetry seemed to me to be a good way to provide it with fairly short poems often with a simple message. Much of the advice I have picked up over the years I wish I had received much earlier in the journey.

That is essentially how my first book "Our Dementia Journey" came about.

This book is essentially a book of poems which are heartfelt and some of which were very emotional for me writing them, which I hope you will enjoy and empathise with.

At the same time I hope that this book will be an easy read and may help others avoid some of the pain and emotional stresses I know I suffered. I do hope there are one or two nuggets in the book that will be helpful to you at some stage of your journey.

All my royalties from the book go to Alzheimers Research UK the largest dedicated dementia research charity in the world aimed at finding a cure and treatments for dementia.

I hope you enjoy reading the book and would be very grateful if you would review it on Amazon to hopefully encourage others to read it and raise additional funds for Alzheimers Research.

I can be contacted at:

pat@poemsfordementia.com

Twitter: @pat_mct