practical living
treatment of people who come from the LGBTI community
and what it was like for them living in care homes. And I was
absolutely horrified, shocked, by the sort of treatment they were
getting because of their gender differentiation. So I then sat
down and had a conversation with a good friend of mine who
said to me, “John, what was it like as a male getting a diagnosis?”
And that started me to reflect on what it meant to me.
Now, as a male being brought up in the ‘50s, there was a lot
of sexual stereotyping about what was expected. In those days,
females used to leave school at about the age of 14 and 15, and
go on and do secretarial work, or work in a bank and do other
things. Whereas males, about 30–40 per cent of males, would go
on and do further education, because it was expected of males
in those days to be the breadwinner. And the better education
you got, the more opportunities you had for work. So when I got
a diagnosis of dementia, because of the male stereotyping that
existed, the sexual stereotyping that existed during my era, the
first minute I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed that I could no longer
provide for my family.
And I not only felt ashamed, I felt as if I had lost my autonomy.
And because of the nature of my dementia, where I have
difficulty problem solving, decision-making and so on, I had to
leave a lot of the decisions to my care partner. And that really
impacted upon me as a male.
The other male-defining activity that really impacted upon me
was having to relinquish my driver’s licence.
I’ve presented locally, nationally and overseas, and whenever
I got the opportunity I started having conversations with other
males who were diagnosed with dementia. So I suppose I carried
out my own little research project. And, interestingly, when I
had conversations with males, I found that a lot of the issues
that impacted upon me also impacted upon them. I spoke to
a guy who was a handyman and he said the biggest impact
which dementia had on him was he had to sit at home while he
watched other handymen do the work around the house. And
even worse than that was the fact that he had to pay them for it.
There’s a young guy, I mean young, he’s younger than me,
he was in his late 40s and he was diagnosed with dementia one
day and he lost his driver’s licence the same day. And when he
had a conversation with me, he said to me the biggest impact
which a dementia diagnosis had on him was the fact that he
had to lose his licence. He had to go into care, because he and
his wife at the time had four children all of school age, and she
had become the breadwinner because he could no longer work.
She found that when he stayed at home during the day, he just
couldn’t look after himself. So she had to make the hard decision
to bring in the care. So he went into care at the age of 50, maybe
51, and the average age of the person in care where he was living
was about 85.
Now, I vis