Dementia Action Week

Jacob Young Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

Both of my grandads had Alzheimer’s disease, but they experienced widely different pathways with their condition. For my grandad Matty, his Alzheimer’s was diagnosed at age 81 while living with my mam and dad, and he lived until the age of 86, finally saying goodbye to us during lockdown last year. But my grandad Mick had a rare form called posterior cortical atrophy.

In 2006, at the age of 62, Michael Garrity realised something was wrong. He looked for a diagnosis, but his GP told him and my grandma that he did not have dementia. For five years my grandma fought to find out why he was struggling—why they were struggling. In that five years things became even harder. I remember he would sit and watch “The Weakest Link”, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” and “University Challenge” and get almost every answer right, but he would struggle to tie his shoes or find a way around the coffee table. He began taking bus journeys and forgetting where he was going and where he had been. It was not until 2011 that James Cook University Hospital noticed his PCA, five years after my grandad first saw his GP.

The problem is that those five years were lost time, when our family could have understood the disease better —how it would affect my grandad, how it would hit my grandma. In 2014, my grandad was finally admitted into care. Over the first six months, he was moved into a care home, then moved into a hospital, then to a new home, then into a psychiatric hospital and then into another new home. He was given the wrong medication, which escalated his condition. He became mute and developed new health problems, too. This was all because he had this unusual type of Alzheimer’s. He had high dependency and the care system could not find the right way to care for him. He died in his sleep in the early hours of 16 April 2018.

I spoke to my grandma this morning, I asked her what message she wanted me to get across today. It was simply that diagnosis is key and then support into the right care. For five years she fought to get the diagnosis my grandad needed, and earlier intervention may have prevented the horrific experience he went through in the early stages of his care.

It is clear from my experience that Alzheimer’s disease can hit people in completely different ways. In the last 12 months, we have invested in science and medicine like never before to deliver a viable covid vaccine at pace. We must have the same drive to attack this disease—to drive earlier diagnosis and new interventions to limit the effects and ultimately to develop a cure. We may never fully eradicate dementia, but learning more about it would mean those facing it are treated with the dignity they deserve. I miss my grandads dearly—we all do.