Hi,
Most of my friends know about the story of my mother falling ill. My friend Ed used JustGiving to raise money for charity for his crazy across the Sahara suicidal run, and an idea of using this site to raise money for researches dedicated to Alzheimer's started budding in my head.
I used to hate running. I used to hate running so much my friend Julia would laugh at me whenever she dragged me out of our house in Norwich city to run to the uni. I saw no point in getting myself in such a state, and would use my asthma as an excuse to not go.
In 2006 I moved back to Hong Kong to help dad look after mum, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. When I moved back in September, she could still cook a simple meal, though she had long stopped knitting. Then things went downhill very quickly. By the end of the six months she couldn’t even dress herself. Often she would hold my arms and ask me to rescue her, asking me why she had acquired such an illness, why she had lost control of her own mind. Tear was seen as a sign of weakness in my family, so I was brought up to never cry in front of people. When I saw her tears, each of them hurt like a stabbing wound. Every morning I dreaded waking up, as I didn’t know what else she would have lost from her mind. Every day it was something new, and something old.
Then one day we learnt that she was attacking dad, who had been keeping it quiet until my brother saw what happened. She had to be moved to a hospital, then a home. Then things dwindled downhill out of hand. Every time I went to see her I asked myself if things could get any worse with her, and they did.
It was at that time that my closest friends Bernard and Ali suggested that I start some form of exercise. A keen runner himself, Bernard suggested running. I needed to drag myself out of that bottomless pit. I needed some form of focus, and every little sense of achievement added up. Apart from friends and family, it was probably running that helped get rid of my desire to throw myself out of the balcony at the time.
Alzheimer’s is by far the cruellest disease I’ve ever witnessed. All diseases are horrible and there is no quantifiable ground for comparison, but the stress, the despair that Alzheimer’s brings to the patient and the family is beyond imagination. There is still no cure, and I’m hoping that apart from offering to share my experience of the illness with people in need, little can I help, I would like to raise money for researches that will help fight the illness and hopefully cure it one day.
Please donate, every little helps. Even just a fiver will help the research go a small step further.
Thanks.
Karen
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