Being able to see the joke is a bonus

There are two strands to this post which do link so please stay with me. 

Over the past few months I have discovered that technology and dementia do not mix well.  Ash used to have a mobile phone which was so uncomplicated that all he could do on it was make calls and receive calls, send texts and receive texts, oh and it had a camera on it.  I have one similar but without the camera so you can see that we're not a high-tec couple.  Anyway his phone finally gave up the ghost so I ordered an identical one through a well known internet auction site thinking that would solve the problem.  Unfortunately the 'new' one wouldn't work either nor the next one I bought so I decided to get him the new Nokia 3310 which I thought would be identical to the old one but with the internet which he didn't need to use.  If you too are thinking the same I am here to tell you that there are very few similarities between the old phone and the new and Ash's stress levels went through the roof to the point where he has decided it's stupid and doesn't work.  I persuaded him that he doesn't need a phone and so, for the past couple of months, life has gone along happily phone free.

Cut to this morning and a conversation about an anxiety podcast.  Ash used to have one of these on his laptop which helped him when he was feeling anxious (This was before dementia officially entered our lives and the thing we thought was the main problem) but apparently the shortcut has disappeared so he asked me to find it again.  This was through the NHS but wasn't on their current list of therapies so I began to look for a replacement.    I suggested 'Myheadspace' and 'Calm.com' both of which have been recommended to me but using something completely different was not conducive with keeping his anxiety levels at a minimum!   I'm not sure the NHS quite understand the need for people with dementia to have access to the familiar but I did try to find something similar and began working my way down the list.  Unfortunately the one that I thought would suit him the best had the description 'Beat Panic is designed to guide people through a panic attack or raised anxiety using their phone'.  I called him through to read this and discovered that the real benefit of this app is that the hilarity it caused banished the anxiety attack to the ether.

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