Some things never change

You have to know a person to understand whether their behaviour, when it seems unreasonable, is so because of their dementia or whether they're always like that.

Dad has always been careful with his money; his generation and his class had to be.  He started out in married life without a lot in the bank and never had a particularly well-paid job.  But one particular facet of his character is a deep hostility to household bills, which he would always scrutinize for hidden extras.  A particular bugbear was "standing charges", to which he took vehement excepton, writing letters of complaint to the offending utilities, convinced he could shame them into changing their policies.

So when recently he started complaining about his high telephone bill and demanding to know what all these standard charges were for, that wasn't dementia so much as an old tape playing in his head, Dad being dad.  All right, he hadn't made such a fuss about bills in recent years, recognising the futility of challenging them, but it was still in character.  Dementia still came into it though; he would never have previously suggested that when he went back to the TV shop to enquire about his missing part, he'd take his phone bill along to see if they could sort it out for him.  Why, Dad?  "Because it says on the receipt that they'll help with anything electrical".  Dad, I said, phones are phones and tellies are tellies, two different kinds of appliance?

I think I got through.  Next time we spoke he'd paid the bill.  A professional carer might not have recognised that Dad, in carrying on like this, was just being the man he's always been, with a bit of confusion on top.  Sometimes there's just no susbtitute for having known someone all your life.