Early-stage Dementia – What to do with the wallet, card of identification and the EZY Link card?
Humans are creatures of habits. This remains true even with the diagnosis of dementia.
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Persons living with early-stage dementia are usually still reasonably independent with varying degree of memory lapses and losses. As dementia sets in, most individuals will still be going about with one’s life routines including going out, walking around the neighbourhood or using public transport as part of their daily routines. To add on, as creatures of habits, we had, since young, nurtured and maintained this particular “do not leave home with it” habit; with it being our wallets. In it, we know that there will be our identity cards, money and EZY Link cards for the public transport users. It is unrealistic of well-intentioned loved ones to expect and ‘ensure’ that the individual does not go out alone upon being diagnosed with dementia especially the early stage. Out of protecting their loved, in addition to telling their loved one not to go out alone, some even go to the extent of taking away the keys and wallet of the person, with the assumption that this will prevent the person from going out alone. Of course, in reality, such will not stop a person from going out alone as long as he/she is still mobile.
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Hence, we have heard many stories about loved ones losing their way and failing to return home. Or maybe we had personally experienced that before.
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I remembered having to walk around the neighbourhood of my late-grandfather with a photograph of his, and asking every hawker and passer-by if they had seen that senior man in the photo. That happened many years back. With the help of the nice hawkers, who were able to point to the direction that they had last seen him walking towards, I found him sitting at a table by himself. When I approached him and called out to him, he smiled and waved to me. That was past 5 o’clock in the evening and he got out of the house at about 8 o’clock in the morning. I was so happy and relieved to have found him, especially to have found him in a good condition – looking calm and happy by himself instead of scared or panicky. We were the ones who had been panicking and worried since mid-day! I sat down with him with a smile and asked if he was ok. He smiled back. I told him that he had been out for hours, it was past five, and we should return home. With that, we started walking back to his house. My grandmother was so relieved to see both of us.
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More recently, my aunt shared with me a “lose-his-way and missing-for -the-whole night” story. It was her neighbour. Let’s call him Mr Lim. Mr Lim was recently diagnosed with dementia. For decades, Mr Lim has been going out on his own more frequently than to go out with his wife or as a family. The recent diagnosis is not going to stop him from going out alone despite being repeatedly told by Mrs Lim and their daughter not to do it. Therefore, out of fear that strangers will help themselves to his money or even his identity card in his wallet to commit some petty crimes or borrow money from the loanshark (a common fear among the older Singaporeans), Mrs Lim and their daughter had decided to keep Mr Lim’s wallet away from him. One day, Mr Lim went out on his own in the morning while Mrs Lim was out doing marketing and failed to return home. The family was sick with worry as night fell and gone. By the next morning, Mr Lim had been missing for twenty-four hours so they could make a police report then. Within hours of making the police report, they found Mr Lim at a local hospital. Mr Lim had gone out, taken a bus and fell while alighting from the bus, sustaining some minor injuries. He was, therefore, sent to the hospital for treatment. But the staff at the hospital could not contact his family as Mr Lim did not have any form of identity card with him (as his family members had kept his wallet) and he was unable to provide any details to contact his family. I can imagine their relief when they found Mr Lim. Such would not have happened if they did not take away Mr Lim’s wallet from him. The hospital’s staff would have been able to trace and contact Mrs Lim via his identity card.
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I am privileged to have conducted a 3-day workshop for a group of seniors early this week. My participants had been very generous with their sharing of their personal experiences, thoughts and opinions, and we had lots of fun for those three days. Among them was X. (I will be using X throughout this paragraph for privacy and confidentiality purpose.) X has had a transient stroke, resulting in X experiencing recent occasional memory lapses – a symptom of vascular dementia. Besides the few word-searching episodes, over the past three days, I have noticed that X is not any different from you and I. X was vocal, confident, friendly, warm and keen to learn. X shared with me an episode of recent memory lapse. X was heading home. In the MRT station, X’s mind went blank all of a sudden. X could not remember where home is, nor how to get home. Although X was holding on to X’s mobile phone, X did not know how to operate the phone. BLANK, BLANK, BLANK. At that moment, it seemed like X was depending on a BLANK disc, there was no information stored on that disc. No address, no instructions, nothing… X’s whole mind just went BLANK! X did not know what to do, so X just sat at the train platform. After some time, an SMRT staff approached X and asked if X needed assistance. X told the staff what had just happened. The staff was very reassuring and politely requested for X’s wallet. X took out the wallet and passed it to the staff. The staff then informed X which station to alight based on X’s identity card, and the former also made arrangements for his colleague to meet X at the destination station. Upon arriving at the destination station, the other SMRT staff approached X and verified X’s identity. The former then walked X home. X was relieved to be home. It was a nerve-wracking experience for X. The factor that saved the day for X (versus Mr Lim) was that X was carrying a wallet with an identity card which enabled and facilitated timely assistance from the community. X’s identity card had prevented X from getting lost and failed to return home even when the mind went blank.
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My friends, in this article, I like to encourage you to re-evaluate your decision to keep your loved one’s wallet including any form of identification. There are more and more helpful souls in the community who have been trained to help persons living with dementia. But we will not be able to help if we are unable to identify the individual, as per Mr Lim’s case. For those of you who have not been trained to competently help persons living with dementia in the community, please sign up for our upcoming workshops in 2019! Register your interest here: https://forms.gle/dwyVY9A7ccsjStvp8