Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Our love kept Mum ALIVE
When dementia struck Irene, her family took care of her at home. And it’s the best thing they ever did, they reveal in a new documentary
Maree Manyweathers and her sister Karen Boore couldn’t help but laugh as they watched their octogenarian mother Irene flirt with men at their local in Margate in Kent and hog the stage to sing her favourite karaoke song Big Spender.
It was a totally new side to Irene that only emerged when she developed dementia 13 years ago. ‘When the dementia kicked in, she was quite a performer,’ explains Maree. ‘She’d dance around the pub, which she wouldn’t have done before. All the regulars adored her and she’d say, “Hello, handsome”. It was fun to see her enjoying herself.’
It was the upside to what was an otherwise torturous final three years of Irene Miles’s life. They’re chronicled in ambitious new documentary series This Is Our Family, which follows four families over three years as they experience life-changing events. There’s bereavement, a child with an unidentified neurological condition and a serial offender trying to go straight, while the Miles episode shows Maree, a 48-year-old divorcee, and her three daughters – Ellie, 23, Lily, 18, and 15-year-old Dolce – nursing Irene through her illness.
Dementia is a growing health issue. Currently there are 850,000 sufferers in the UK, but that figure is set to rise to 1.6 million by 2040 as we live longer. According to the Alzheimer’s Society, the annual cost of caring for dementia sufferers in the UK is £34.7 billion, with two-thirds of that figure covered by the sufferers and their families, either in unpaid care or in paying for private social care.
Irene began showing signs of confusion two years after her husband Barry died from Parkinson’s. ‘At that time she lived with Karen and would ring me every ten minutes and ask, “Do you know where Karen is?”’ recalls Maree, who runs a clothes boutique. Once Irene needed more care than pub manager Karen could deliver, Maree moved her in with her family. ‘Because Mum was very much for her family – and she wasn’t a people person – I could never have put her in a care home,’ says Maree. ‘My girls would say, “I’ll give up my job and look after her rather than have her in a home.” They adored her and she’d always spoiled them.’
But dementia often changes a sufferer’s personality, and Irene was often belligerent. ‘She could be quite aggressive,’ explains Maree. ‘One night Dolce was trying to put her to bed and Mum scratched her. Showering her was horrendous. Mum was proud, and I suppose that must have still been with her, so when we were saying, “I’m going to give you a wash, Mum,” she’d start effing and blinding. She’d say, “How dare you?” and not let us change her.
‘It was the illness, but it was very challenging. A few times I’d ring Karen and say, “I can’t do this any more” and cry. Then I’d get over it and realise she couldn’t help it.’
Losing the mother she knew required a big mental adjustment for Maree. ‘I’d relied on her to help with the kids when they were young,’ she says. ‘She’d worry about them even more than me, and once the dementia kicked in she lost that. It was hard to grasp that someone who I’d always turned to for help now needed mine.’
Maree does believe the care enabled her mother to recognise the family up to the end. ‘If she’d gone into a care home, I don’t think she’d have remembered us. When Mum had to go to hospital for treatment, a nurse said that what was keeping her alive was the love from us lot.’
The family received little support from social services. ‘They must be snowed under, so I’m not going to moan,’ she says. ‘But I’d recommend you line up help quickly after someone is diagnosed. In the end we got a grant to adapt Mum’s bathroom, and a hospital bed for the house, but it came just a week before she died.’
Irene passed away, aged 87, on 31 May last year. ‘She was at home with all of us there. Dolce was lying on the bed with her giving her a cuddle when she took her last breath. She had the best passing.’
Today Maree is ‘extremely proud’ of the sacrifices her daughters made to care for their grandmother. ‘I felt guilty because they’re young and shouldn’t be having to stay at home looking after Nan, but they now say it’s the best thing they ever did. We all feel the same – we haven’t got an ounce of guilt about Mum. We did everything we could. I hope the documentary shows you can still make the best of a horrible illness.’ Vicki Power This Is Our Family, Tuesday, 10.05pm, Sky Atlantic.