Dementia is not a D

Joy Watson tells HANNAH BRITT that having early- onset Alzheimer’s disease will not stop her living life to the full

WHEN Joy Watson was diagnosed with earlyonset Alzheimer’s disease on her 55th birthday two years ago her husband Tony felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “When the doctors actually said the word ‘ Alzheimer’s’ I felt a huge sense of relief. At last we knew what it was and after years of fighting we had an answer,” says Tony, 69.

“It wasn’t the one we wanted but now we could move forward.”

This may seem like a surprising response to such a devastating diagnosis but for Joy and Tony, who have two sons, Justin, 33, and Abe, 30, it was the end of a six- year struggle to find the cause of a series of puzzling and distressing symptoms that were having a severe effect on Joy’s independence and quality of life.

“It started out as clumsiness and not being able to find the right words for things,” says Joy, who was 49 when she first noticed something was amiss.

“As soon as I felt under pressure or someone pointed out that I was struggling or tried to find the word for me, it would aggravate my anxiety and make me worse.”

As a result she became more withdrawn and it wasn’t long before her work as a carer began to suffer. “I was putting my clients at risk,” she says. “While it was fine to forget their tea order, it was another thing altogether to forget their medication.”

At the age of 52, her self- doubt and anxiety levels were such that she stopped working altogether. But despite undergoing memory tests and scans, she did not receive a diagnosis for a further three years. Alzheimer’s is the most common type of dementia and affects about 850,000 Britons – although numbers are expected to rocket to more than two million within the next decade.

It is a progressive neurological disease, having multiple effects on brain function, such as memory loss and difficulties with thinking, problem- solving and language, as well as spatial awareness problems.

In most people with Alzheimer’s, symptoms first appear in their mid- 60s but symptoms of the early- onset form of the condition can appear between the ages of 30 and 60.

“We were initially told that I was too young to have dementia,” says Joy. “My memory loss was put down to depression, stress and the menopause but to be honest, I knew deep down that it was dementia.” In the months that followed her diagnosis Joy became depressed. “For two months I sat on the sofa feeling suicidal – I’d hit rock bottom,” she says. “I thought, ‘ I don’t want this, I haven’t chosen this journey.’ I was quite angry.”

The leaflets on dementia she had been given by her doctor went straight in the bin. “They were so inappropriate for people my age,” she says. “They didn’t tell me what to do, they told me to get my affairs in order, get a power of attorney and make sure my will was okay. It was like a death sentence. I couldn’t see any upside to the situation.”

But the woman she is describing is unrecognisable from the Joy sitting in front of me today. At our meeting in a London pub, Joy, with her bright purple dyed hair, is accompanied by Tony and their labradoodle puppy Demi,