Sir Jackie: Our home’s become a high-tech haven for dementia victim wife
FORMULA One legend Sir Jackie Stewart has transformed his home into a high-tech safe house to help make life easier for his wife as she battles dementia.
The 79-year-old Scots racing icon yesterday described his spouse’s condition as the ‘biggest challenge of my life’ as he told how the disease had affected the pair.
Sir Jackie and Lady Helen Stewart, 77, have been married for 56 years and she has been by his side throughout his remarkable track career.
Now, she needs round-the-clock care from a team of eight neuroscience nurses. The couple’s four-storey home on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland, has also been kitted out with state-of-the-art sensors which go off should Lady Helen get up in the night and fall.
Sir Jackie has given £2million to fund research into a cure for dementia. Some 225,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with the condition every year.
Lady Helen had vascular dementia diagnosed in 2014 after she could not remember the details of a car accident in the grounds of the couple’s estate in the Chiltern Hills, Buckinghamshire.
Speaking yesterday, Sir Jackie – born in Milton, Dunbartonshire – described how he has taken a proactive approach to Lady Helen’s illness.
He said: ‘I can’t sit there, as I do with my wife, watching the degradation that dementia creates, without doing something.’
He added: ‘I’m not frightened by it. I’m not even depressed by it. There are no problems, only solutions. I’ve lived my whole life like that.
‘I’ve survived, by one form or another. So, how can I possibly sit back and watch this without doing something about it?’
Lady Helen’s short-term memory and mobility are impaired by the degenerative condition and day-to-day tasks are a struggle, meaning she is frequently awake during the night.
Last year, Sir Jackie announced he had donated £2million to fund dementia research through his own charity, Sir Jackie’s Race Against Dementia.
He also explained how he is drawing inspiration for research into the disease from F1 engineers, saying the sport offers a promising template. Describing the work, he said: ‘I want to do it different to how it has been done before.
‘I’ve been to every major hospital specialising in dementia and they are all thinking the same way.
‘I don’t want to be seen as the critic of some brilliant creators, but what do I do? Do I stay with the establishment, or do I try to find something new?
‘F1 is a fantastic example of continuous change, of incredible problem-solving. Innovation happens quicker than in any other field I can think of.’
In 2016, Sir Jackie described how Lady Helen’s illness took hold. He said: ‘My wife was the original pit-lane girl, my professional stopwatch – timing my laps to the millisecond.
‘Her razor-sharp mind was one of the things I fell in love with, and it’s her mind that is vanishing. Her short-term memory is shot.’
He added: ‘Somehow I knew there was a problem when Helen stopped putting on her watch.
‘It sounds silly but she put on the same watch every day, and all of a sudden she didn’t.
‘When she went to check the time and the watch wasn’t there, she would think she’d lost it or that it had fallen off.
‘At first I thought she was being forgetful, but then she started to forget lots of little things that turned into bigger things.’
‘I can’t sit by and do nothing’