I may need to put Barbara in a care home says husband
DAME Barbara Windsor may soon move into a care home as her health is rapidly deteriorating in her battle with Alzheimer’s, her husband has revealed.
The beloved EastEnders and Carry On star, 82, has been living with the degenerative disease since 2014, but it has now ‘worryingly progressed’.
Her heartbroken husband Scott Mitchell, 57, said the thing he has always feared is his wife having to leave their marital home – which could soon become a reality.
In an interview with Ross Kemp, which aired on ITV last night, Mr Mitchell said that his wife’s doctor had told him to ‘prepare himself’.
‘He’s basically telling me I need to prepare myself that at some point it may not be sustainable to give her the kind of care she needs at the house,’ he said.
‘It’s horrible, it’s the thing I’ve always feared. I’ve been, I mean I’ve had some fairly dark moments since he said that. Because there is a part of me that knows that that is the truth and that is the most likely thing to happen.’
Mr Mitchell added: ‘But there is another part of me which can’t imagine letting her go.
‘I can’t imagine leaving that lady, when she talks to me the way she does and putting her somewhere and her thinking, “Why has he done this?”’
The candid interview was part of a documentary, called Ross
Kemp: Living With Dementia, which looks at the impact of the illness. Kemp, who played Dame Barbara’s on-screen son Grant, in EastEnders, said he had noticed a ‘marked decline’ in her health in recent months.
He said the veteran star now fails to recognise herself in photographs from her heyday and struggles to remember who he is when he visits her.
Of his last visit, Kemp said: ‘The nature of the disease is she initially knew exactly who I was, and three minutes later she looked at me and asked who I was. She looks at the pictures of her in her heyday and career and goes, “Who is that lady?”’
Mr Mitchell, who has been married to Dame Barbara since 2000, said one of his biggest fears over the past few months has been that his wife would catch coronavirus. He had experienced symptoms shortly after lockdown began.
‘I didn’t have the cough but I had every other symptom. I was not well. My biggest fear at that point was that I was going to
‘It’s the thing I’ve always feared’
give it Barbara,’ he said. Last year the former actor tearfully told how Dame Barbara’s condition was worsening as he wrote a public letter to Boris Johnson, calling on the Government to fix the broken dementia care system.
Speaking on Virgin Radio’s Chris Evans Breakfast Show in august, Mr Mitchell said: ‘I’d say things are the same and a bit worse. the confusion deepens.
‘there are two kinds of sides of the condition with Barbara.
Sometimes we’ll just be sitting there having a normal conversation and she’ll be watching tV or seeing people she knows on the tV. She’ll be chatting and laughing and her humour can be brilliant and I can be, let’s say, the centre of her universe.
‘the reverse side of that is... she then will look at me sometimes – it’s getting quite regular now – and say to me, “are we married?” or, “Have you stayed here before?” or “are we going home now?” when we’re sitting in our front room.’