Anita’s Story
See the transcript below for our YouTube video of NDIS Disability Service for Anita.
Hi, Welcome to the BlueWing show, where we’re going to talk about relief, support, care, and family for our participants. It is our mission to show you there is help and support, and people that care about the individuals.
Hi, I’m Zoe from BlueWing care professionals. We’re here today to go visit Anita, and her goal facilitators that are on site. We do 24/7 SILl, Supported Independent Living, so that Anita can live her best life. Anita has dementia. She has a dog called Bella, and we’ve come to have a visit to see how she is today.
My name Anita McCarthy and I’ve got dementia.
I was just having a normal, you know, working situation. I was working high up in a bank, Westpac and then things sort of, couldn’t start. I couldn’t remember things. And I was asked by the boss to come in to see him about it, and I did. And he’s, you know, we’ve sort of seen that you can’t do the things that you used to be able to do. I had a bank manager who would ring me up and sort of say, “What is such-and-such’s as phone number? I just straightaway go “dadadadada”. I was going along with that for some time and then all of a sudden, it all came to a big stop. I couldn’t remember anything anymore. I was basically told, when I went to see a doctor, that I had full-on dementia.
Zoe: How did you feel when that all happened? Anita: It was pretty heartbreaking, you know, it sort of being in the bank that I had been in, and what I could do, then I couldn’t do anything. So, unfortunately, my dad had dementia. Never drank smoked or anything. But he died of dementia.
Probably about four and a half, maybe five years ago. Now I’ve been battling it since then. Trying to just say that I haven’t got it. Can I ask how old you are? Like what age? I really can’t remember. You got any help here? You are 61 now. Can I roll everything back as I can become 21.
People that work for BlueWing. Especially here, are fantastic. I can’t fault any of them, they’re beautiful people, and they’re great.
Zoe: We help with your meal prep, appointments, and everything like that. Shopping.
So, Anita’s quite high functioning. With the support of the 24/7. She’s able to live still independently on her own.
Anita: Yeah, definitely. That’s something I really need, I’d like to have.
Zoe: And that’s what we made sure that you had when you came over to us, is that we can offer her the 24/7 support to keep her in her own home, then go into a nursing home or in a place that she didn’t want to live in.
Anita: Yeah. And it’s been, I’ve been blessed actually living here. It’s fantastic that my support is awesome. So it’s been really great for me and Bella.
I work for Anita, almost one year. The biggest change I think that I noticed, like when I met her she didn’t like going for walks and because she has a dog we needed to go for longer walks but he didn’t really like it. We would take Bella for only few minutes for their walk, which was too short. But now she really enjoys going for long walks. So we go for what 15,20 minutes walk and she told me, she really enjoys it and she even said, recently, before she really hated, but now she likes it a lot. She feels so refreshed and she has even more energy. So I think that’s a very good positive change. And I think, because we know each other, she knows me. I know what she likes. She likes music. Sometimes we sing together, we even dance, she likes to have some fun. So with jokes, she’s very funny as well. She’s just a very lovely person.
Anita: We always have a laugh about stuff and everything like that. I’ll come out in the morning and think I got out of bed and have a shower. And they say, “No, you haven’t had a shower, better go back to bed and start again.”
━━━━━▲━━━━━
Blue Wing Care Professionals is an NDIS Registered Disability Service Provider that offers support to all NDIS Participants.
Providing a range of services to NDIS participants, BlueWing is made up of a team of passionate, dedicated, and experienced healthcare professionals.
We provide complex care, speech therapy, plan management, occupational therapy, support coordination, access to community support, social & recreational activities, and much more.
