At 35, I’m haunted by risk of dementia
Police sergeant told she will get disease that’s blighted family
HANNAH Mackay was only a little girl when her family was shattered by dementia.
It killed her grandfather Reg at the age of 57. Then her father Michael was diagnosed with the disease three decades later.
Now, at the age of 35, the police sergeant has found out that she will also get dementia and may develop symptoms within the next ten years. Mrs Mackay also faces the heartbreaking knowledge that her daughters Harriet, six, and Georgia, three, have a 50 per cent chance of suffering the condition. She said: ‘I think about them getting dementia every second of every day.’
She has a rare genetic mutation that prevents a vital protein being produced. It will eventually cause brain tissue to die and lead to dementia.
The Sussex Police sergeant made the ‘torturous’ decision to get a blood test at University College Hospital in London last September to find out if she had the gene.
She said: ‘Dad was diagnosed in June 2017 when he was 61 and in January 2018 we found out it was definitely genetic. That gave me a 50 per cent chance, and it was up to me whether I wanted to find out.’
She was given the results on December 14 – the day ‘her life changed forever’. Mrs Mackay, who lives near Haywards Heath, said: ‘ I have been forced to face up to my own mortality at the age of 35.
‘Any emotions I have I feel three times over – for my Dad, for my kids and for me.
‘I am grieving for three generations at the same time. For my Dad, who is no longer the same person I grew up with. Then I grieve for my Mum, who has been robbed of a happy retirement. I grieve for myself and the impact it is going to have on me. And I grieve for my children. At the start I felt anger at the unfairness of it all. But now I am channelling that anger to raise money so that there is hope for my children’s generation.
‘If I get dementia at 45 but can make a difference to people in those ten years then I would be happy with that.’
Mrs Mackay has gone through the painful process of watching her father’s condition deteriorate, all while knowing that ‘in the future that will be me’.
She is ‘on a mission’ to raise as much money as possible for the Alzheimer’s Society so that a cure can be found by the time her girls grow up. She will take part in the charity’s Memory Walk this autumn with her family.
It is a series of sponsored walks between 2km and 15km. She is also throwing herself into other fundraising challenges including a marathon and a parachute jump with her 60-year-old mother Claire.
Dementia affects 850,000 Britons, including 42,000 under the age of 65. Dr James Pickett, of the Alzheimer’s Society, said a new form of gene therapy was being tested that could offer a lifeline. He stressed: ‘We urgently need more funding.’
You can register for your local Memory Walk at memorywalk. org.uk
‘I felt anger at the unfairness’