When a care home is the best option for a loved family member with dementia

Brain scans of patients in good health (left) and with Alzheimer's disease (right), with high brain activity in red and yellow and low activity in blue and black. Image: Dr Rober Friedland/Science Photograph: Dr Rober Friedland/Science

My husband, Ian, was running his structural engineering design company and lecturing at the University of Bristol four years ago. Now he lives in a care home unable to walk and hardly able to speak, cursed by the rapid onset of vascular dementia. While I sympathise with Christopher Eccleston’s mother saying “The worst day of my life was when I had to put him [Eccleston’s father] in a home” (‘I am your son’, G2, 1 June), there are excellent homes. For anyone out there facing the same difficult decision, Ian loves the staff at his home in Somerset, which is clean, calm and comfortable. It is far easier for the family to see him like this, even though he probably does not know who the strange people are who pop in to see him. Smiles, food and music are the joys left in his life.
Jane Duncan
Bristol