In 2007, Mum's symptoms of dementia first became very noticeable in the form of unusual behaviour such as barricading doors, tying up gates with handkerchiefs, calling the police all the time to imagined intruders and obsessing over her two cats. But even years before that, she'd made bad judgments with money, selling her house to a conwoman for $100,000 less than it was worth and wasting money on employing tradesmen to carry out unnecessary work. She only became seriously forgetful in 2010.
