Yesterday in met a lady with dementia, the referral was for ‘escalating behaviours and aggression’. Staff have been pushed and shoved and yelled at and are having trouble managing ADLs.

According to her, she is 92 and 1/4 (we counted the months together on her fingers p).

We sat side by side in her room which was empty except for a bed, a chair, and four photos.

I asked about the photos and spent over an hour listening to her tell me her life story. She is incredibly sad that she was an only child so she begged her husband for two children as a condition of marriage.

She feels so lucky she had twins, and named them after their grandmothers.

She loves music and dancing, and acting in plays. Her favourite and final role was as the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins. She told this complete with actions for cleaning a chimney, and we were both in stitches laughing about it.

She worked hard and saved all her money, she was paid in cash and wanted to buy a house so she bundled up the money for the mortgage and carried it into her arms to ‘the Civic Permanent’ (an obsolete Building Society).

She told me she is sad and doesn’t want to live any more because she went to hospital, so ‘the government’ sold her house and took all her money and put her in a home, and her children don’t visit her at all.

This lady does not need medication for her ‘behaviours’. She needs so much more than that, and yet so little.

My prescribing for her was totally non-pharmacological.

1. Buy her a handbag and purse from an op shop and put a few $5 and $10 notes in it. Let her feel like she has some control over her money and owns it.

2. Play Mary Poppins on the big screen in the lounge, sing with her when she sings, and dance with her when she dances.

3. Spend time listening to her, find out what other musicals and plays she likes, then play them and encourage her watch them.

4. Referral to a psycho geriatric nurse practitioner, who will know so much more than me and will help the staff with strategies to engage her and de-escalate behaviours.

I don’t have all the answers, and this might not work, but during my time with her there was not an ounce of aggression. We laughed, we talked, we touched. She kissed me on the cheek when I said goodbye. This was the highlight of my week.