Dr Afolabi Tiamiyu is a US-based physician and the featured guest writer of this article.
There is always some measure of delight and anticipation when as a physician plying the trade away from the shores of one’s motherland, you find out the next patient you are about to see bears a name that signifies the patient is from your native homeland. The joy of the opportunity of conversing in one’s mother tongue, the opportunity to discuss news back home, a momentary cure of homesickness. Something so simple but the rarity makes it special.
Such it was on a beautiful summer morning somewhere in the United States as I looked at the name of the next patient I was about to see, a Yoruba name it was, my native tribe, in the western part of Nigeria. As I walked down the hallway beaming with smiles, I could see a young lady standing at the entrance of the patient’s room forced to respond with a beautiful smile to a stranger walking towards her with a wide, friendly smile. No sooner had I opened my mouth to greet her in my native dialect, did this young lady’s beautiful smile leave her face, taken over by a look of apprehension and worry.
It was only after we walked into the room to see her mum, the patient, and after a quick assessment, that I understood the reason for the change of emotions on the young lady’s face I had observed a couple of minutes back outside the door. Something so powerful and painful enough to change a moment that is supposed to be delightful into a moment of worry and apprehension.
Mama has Dementia, the old lady was speaking in my native tongue, and the contents of what she was saying were quite embarrassing to the daughter and more uncomfortable to her because she knew I fully understood the native language her mother was speaking. She was unsure of my perspective towards it, hence the change of emotions on the young lady’s face.
Of course, for me, I perfectly understood what was playing out and quickly made the young lady comfortable by explaining to her my understanding of the situation. That was when she told me her mother’s story. A story unfortunately far too common in our society.
The young lady had to go back to Nigeria to take her mother away from her village. A decision that had to be taken to prevent further harm from being done to her mother. Her mother had developed the dreadful disease, Dementia.
Fellow villagers, neighbors, and relatives in her village had wrongly and ignorantly termed her condition as confessions of a witch. Even other relatives, family members, and educated ones living in big cities, who should know better, also bought and perpetuated the misconception. She was isolated, and was physically and verbally abused before her daughter came to rescue her.
They termed all the confusing snippets of confused words coming out of an utterer who mostly doesn’t know what he or she is saying as confessions emanating from a witch, now being tormented by spirits to confess her sins.
What is Dementia?
The hallmark of the disease called Dementia is loss of memory. Confusion emanates from possible delusions and hallucinations. In simple words, these patients forget who they are, they lose the memory of everything that has ever happened to them, and they may not even be able to remember their children or family members.
Hence when these patients talk, they do not know what they are saying mostly. They say things they are not even aware they are saying, jumbled expressions of possible snippets of anything that possibly flickers across their minds in any form.
It is not unusual in our society to hear of a case of an old woman found somewhere, who had, unfortunately, wandered away from home, or perhaps, some even cast away by family members. Some onlookers would quickly make up stories that the woman is a witch who was flying like a bird returning from the witches’ meeting at night, but daylight broke, and she turned back into a human. It’s not even unusual to see newspapers publish these stories, further perpetuating the misconceptions.
They then begin to subject these victims to rigorous questioning, and considering the state of dementia, she will likely say yes to some allegations and the mob would be happy to dispense jungle justice – ranging from beating and maiming to lynching to death.
This article is written to address the ignorance, lack of understanding, and awareness of dementia. It is also written with a lot of hope. Hope that maybe someone would read it and extend an arm of kindness to these old people amongst us that develop Dementia. Hope that someone reading may witness a gathering where such a patient with dementia is about to be unjustly punished and wrongly judged and would speak up to save that victim.
Hope that someone reading may know of an elderly person suffering that unjust fate and treatment at this moment somewhere and just speak up and educate the people around that elderly victim and rescue her from false persecution.
Hope that our society at large will understand, that it’s NOT the confessions of a witch.
It’s Dementia. And what is needed is love, patience and professional care.
About the Author: Dr Afolabi Tiamiyu is a Physician and the Founder of Opinion Forum, a not-for-profit organization of patriotic Nigerian professionals at home and in the diaspora, that aims to contribute her quota to nation-building. He is very passionate about improving the health and wellbeing of Nigerians – including mental health.
