The Dementia Diaries:Tales from an unprepared carer

I the first few days after mum died, I asked dad whether he had a key. He showed me that he had a key in a pocket in his wallet. See other post on the Tile fob I put on this key. I labelled the tile ‘Front Door’ with my label maker just to make sure there was no confusion. When we left the house I would prompt dad to lock up to make sure that he was able to do this. I found that he didn’t put his key back in the pocket, leaving it loose where it could easily fall out. I used my label maker to print the word KEY which we stuck on this pocket.

Again, this didn’t seem to be enough. On one of the first days I left dad on his own, a friend was collecting him to take him to a club. Despite the label, the key was not in dad’s wallet. After a bit of detective work, the key was found in dad’s pocket. I’m not sure whether he had taken it out or whether it had not been put back in the pocket and had fallen out. I needed to rethink it!

My daughter has a nifty little photo sticker printer which we bought as an alternative to a polaroid camera. Here is a link to the Canon Zoemini printer we have: https://www.canon.co.uk/printers/zoemini/

I printed a sticker with a picture of a key for his wallet. We were still having difficulties so I added the arrow. This does seem to have finally worked – at least for now!