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If you find yourself caring for a relative with dementia, the chances are you'll need help.

My mother passed away of complications of dementia. As you get older, it really makes you realize how many people are touched by this disease.

My mother watched her loving husband look at her with blankness or contempt and sometimes hatred. And yet dementia is classed as a social condition, so that the state is not required to pay for long-term residential care. Calling it what it is - brain damage - is too expensive.

When you deal with a person who's experiencing dementia, you can see where they're struggling with knowledge. You can see what they forget completely, what they forget but they know what they once knew. You can tell how they're trying to remember.

None of us wants to be reminded that dementia is random, relentless, and frighteningly common.

I'm in awe of people out there who deal with Alzheimer's, because they have to deal with death 10 times over, year after year.

We have all witnessed, as well, family, friends, or medical workers who have chosen to provide years of loving care to persons who may suffer from Alzheimer's or other debilitating illnesses precisely because they are human persons, not because doing so instrumentally advances some other hidden objective.

Those with dementia are still people and they still have stories and they still have character and they're all individuals and they're all unique. And they just need to be interacted with on a human level.

My dementia hasn't just affected me - it's affected my friends and family, too.

People think it's a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer's. But in my mother's case, it's different. My mother has been unhappy all her life. For the first time in her life, she's happy.