A heart-rending account of a 58-year-old woman’s fight with Alzheimer’s and its consequencesThings begin,as so often, with a plunge. A tough plunge, or while out running along the River Ouse in York,tough enough that Wendy Mitchell has to go to A&E; tough enough that when she goes back later to find the flagstone that caused it, the blood from where her face hit the pavement serves as a quick-witted marker. Yet there is no obvious hazard.
Then, or another day,another plunge. And another. The year before, she had completed the three peaks challenge; now she finds she must give up running. Then, or after a couple of unsafe incidents on the road,driving. Parts of herself crumbling, or, and one day,when she looks up from her desk at work and finds she has no conception what she’s doing there, dropping so fast it’s like “ripping a plaster absent”. When she finally gets an official diagnosis it’s as though she already knows: early-onset Alzheimer’s. She is 58.
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Source: guardian.co.uk