When Kate Swaffer was diagnosed with younger onset dementia, she was advised to give up work, study and life as she knew it, put her affairs in order and investigate aged care options. Instead, she ignored this ‘Prescribed Disengagement™’, as she terms it, and reinvested in life – something she recommends to everyone who has been diagnosed with dementia.

Subsequent to my being diagnosed with frontotemporal younger onset dementia in 2008, at the age of 49, health care professionals and service providers all told me the same thing: to give up work, give up study and go home and live for the time I had left. On the way, it was also suggested I put my end-of-life affairs in order – even though at no time was I told dementia is a terminal illness – and to get acquainted with aged care, including selecting a respite day care and residential care facility, sooner rather than later, so I could become used to it. My husband was told he would soon have to give up work to become a full-time carer.

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