Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
GEORGE INSISTS
This Christmas, George Rook will watch from his armchair as his beloved family pull crackers and open presents. Once, he’d have been in the middle of the chaos, laughing and joking, this year, he’ll sit quietly, observing... remembering.
Because George, 67, has vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. He doesn’t know how many more Christmases he will have before he no longer recognises the faces of his beloved wife Jane and his three grown-up children.
And whereas he’s always been the one cooking the turkey and arranging the family board games, now he takes a back seat. “I hate being the Grinch of Christmas,” he says. “So I have to be proactive to escape scenarios that might make that happen.”
He is just one of about 850,000 people in Britain currently living with a form of dementia and, despite his struggles, George is determined to remain positive and make the most of every day, including Christmas.
“I have to remember I’m one of the lucky ones to actually have a diagnosis,” he adds. “Only 20% of dementia patients do. I can manage my condition with medication and the frustration is much less, knowing what I’m dealing with.”
The former English teacher and school business manager had noticed he was struggling with certain things, before he was finally diagnosed in 2014.
“Fifteen years ago, I had a double heart bypass. I had two arteries that were clogged around my heart and the implication was that, if they’re clogged, it’s likely that others will be, too,” he says.
“So my risk of vascular dementia, where the blood flow to the brain is restricted, was a real possibility.”
He was, in fact, living with dementia for years before the diagnosis. George, from Ellesmere, Shrops, was finding it hard to remember names at work and to find words “on the tip of his tongue”.
And he had increasing difficulty in organising his diary and started having to write everything down.
Eventually, five years ago, George went to his GP, who referred him to the memory service.
They diagnosed mild cognitive impairment at the time, but thought it was due to depression and work stress.
But George’s condition continued to deteriorate, particularly in his cognitive skills, and he became convinced he had dementia. He was referred for a brain scan, which led to his diagnosis.
George, who had a central role in setting up Shropshire Dementia Action Alliance, says despite going through a “black period” for days afterwards, he now finds his dementia “more irritating than anything else”, particularly when it comes to social interactions.
And one of these is Christmas. Before his diagnosis, George’s job was to cook the Christmas dinner. “I enjoyed cooking for my loved ones, but I simply can’t any more,” he says. “The thing I really can’t handle is any noise around me in the kitchen, because I can’t cope with the distraction and become so agitated.”
Last year was the first time in 40 years that he didn’t cook the Christmas dinner.
Jane, 61, an NHS manager, agrees Christmas can feel like another bereavement. She says: “Christmas is really no different to any other time of the year, but it does seem more poignant.
“It’s worse for the children, seeing the father they know disappearing, changing. It’s hard for them to accept and understand.”
And George adds: “I just feel redundant at C that ther fault
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