Story
On 19th Sept – 29th I will be embarking on a Trek to Machu Picchu in support of the Alzheimer’s Society. The route we are taking is a demanding and rarely used inca highway....this is not the main popular inca Trek, it is almost double the distance climbing past snow capped mountains and glacial peaks to 15,255 ft (7,253 ft higher than Machu Picchu).
1 in 3 people born today will get dementia. Alzheimer’s is so terribly underfunded and one of leading causes of death for which there is no treatment.
** Funds need to be raised by Sept
My Story
My Dad, William Stakes was a healthy and active individual. In his 20’s he was a signalman for the RAF stationed in Maldives and Cyprus, on his return to the UK he fell in love with my mother who he idolised for the next 45 years. My Mum and Dad had 3 children and in order to provide for his family Dad worked as a Draftsman during the day and attended nightschool in the evenings eventually qualifying to become a college lecturer. Dad retired from teaching early, he kept his brain engaged with books and he was a font of knowledge from both a mathematical and literary sense.
In 2008 Dad (who was v physically active) was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a form of blood cancer.
During dads treatment we started to notice that he was becoming forgetful. Over the course of the next year Dads forgetfulness increased, he would often get short-tempered and we became concerned about his welfare....after a trip to the doctors it was confirmed that he had Alzheimer's Disease.
If I had to describe Alzheimers in one word, I would use the word 'torture’, torture for the person with the disease and for all of their loved ones. Dads personality changed from loving husband and father to a suspicious and often aggressive stranger. A common trait of Alzheimers patients is to accuse people closest to them of mistreatment and sadly Dad directed his aggression at the one person who was helping him the most, my mum who by now had all but given up work to care for him 24/7. He had stopped reading because he struggled to read past a page and he often didn’t recognise his own children. Occasionally he would become lucid and when he did it was a great joy, he was back cracking jokes, telling my mother how much he loved her and playing with his grandchildren– but these moments were fleeting and became few and far between. One time that will unfortunately stick in my memory forever was when the doctor deemed dad a danger to himself and he was committed to a in-patient mental health facility. When I visited him at the mental health unit I found him in a 6ft x 8ft single room with bars on the windows, dad looked at me and asked ‘what have I done, why am I in prison?’ I returned to my car later that evening and sobbed at the hopelessness of the situation and the unfairness of this disease robbing my parents of their last month’s together - tainting all of our happy memories.
Dad did return home after two weeks in the mental health unit and a few months later he was admitted to The Christie, a cancer hospital. The last time I spoke with dad was at The Christie on Christmas day 2013, I arrived in the morning with mum and he was scared, he didn’t know who we were/ where he was and his confusion was palpable. Clearly in pain, dad had now got to a stage where he could no longer feed himself unaided and had forgotten how to swallow food – this was making his body even weaker and on Boxing day he lost consciousness.
On 4th Jan 2014, 5 years after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis dad was transferred to St Anns Hospice where he passed in the early hours of 5th Jan 2014 surrounded by his immediate family. It is unclear whether it was the Cancer or the Alzheimers disease that my dad finally succumbed to but I would say that although the cancer claimed his body, Alzheimer's had already extinguished his life.
Why the Machu Picchu Challenge?
When I was looking for ways to support the Alzheimers society I came across this challenge and I knew in my heart that I had to this in honour of my father. I would not wish for any individual or family to go through the daily heartbreak that we endured for 5 years due to this horrific disease. This year the search for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease suffered a ‘heavy blow’ after Pfizer, the world’s largest drugs company, announced it was halting research efforts into finding new treatments. It is vital that all of us – charities, government, individuals and industry alike – make commitments to dementia research if we are to bring an end to the heartbreak of dementia. Please support the Alzheimer's society by donating what you can to assist in finding a cure.