Growing up life at home was busy.  Along with running the house hold, opening the gardens to the public and attending to our many visitors including B&B guests, my mother was active with several local charities, hosting dinners, garden parties, organising charity events and pony club hunter trials.

 

And then she went off the boil, she was no longer able  to keep track of what was going on, no longer felt able to meet people or attend events which she had organised for years.  By the age of sixty even washing up had become a major challenge.  She died of Alzheimer's shortly before her sixty fifth birthday.

 

After the hectic round of carers and home visits, then the funeral and all the other administrative work, it was no surprise when my father appeared to be depressed.  Despite the best efforts of family, friends and doctors, that depression never left.  It was not long before I found a box of Aricept tablets on his kitchen table.  A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s had been confirmed shortly after his seventieth birthday.  

 

Father was obliged to move from the house and gardens he and my mother had lovingly built together.  After three years of increasing dependence, he moved to secure residential care eighteen months ago.

 

If I ask you if you would you like a cup of coffee it would take less than a second and little thought to reply.  Ask an Alzheimer's sufferer and you may be faced with a look of sheer panic.  That simple string of  “I'm thirsty, I like hot black coffee and it’s time for a break” is just not there for them, at all.  To an Alzheimer's suffer the question posed is huge, often too vast to cope with - do I want it, black/white, what is white, is it time for coffee, do I like coffee, what is coffee?  Think of all the decisions, the thousands of decisions, you make every day, often without thought; but without memory to give meaning and context, they cannot be processed.  Eventually you can no longer function, you are no longer you. Those closest to you no longer have meaning to you... and yet still have to care for you, all day, every day and all night, every night.

 

It is a horrid thing to witness, the decline of a loved one; what it must be like for the individual concerned to know each day that they will be less sure of who they are or what is going on, but still somewhere deep down knowing they are not right and getting worse and worse ...  I still cannot conceive.  I watched my mother decline from a loving, very able and confident woman to someone who faded to a point where she eventually forgot to keep breathing.  My father watched in horror as this happened to his adored wife, and is now suffering the same cruel fate.

 

Few of us are fortunate to grow up without a relative suffering from this horrific disease or a related dementia.  We are told that an increasingly high proportion of us will suffer similarly in the coming years.  This is why I believe that research into finding relief and ultimately a cure for victims of Alzheimer's disease is so important. Please help me raise funds in support of this cause.

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