There is no dignity in this Alzheimer’s parade
21 February 2009
In the week that John Suchet made his wife’s dementia public, Carol Sarler questions this revelatory trend. Is it really what the sufferers would have wanted?
Her end, when it came, was beyond ghastly. Iris Murdoch, one of our doughtier literary intellects, was reduced to screaming, drooling delirium at one end of her frail body and to defecation without any sense of suitable time or place at the other. All of this we know because, exactly 10 years ago, her husband told us, when he wrote of ‘the lady whom I sat on the loo this morning, wiped her bottom and scrubbed her hands and her brown fingernails’.
John Bayley’s book was a lucrative best-seller and its film a box office success, sweeping up an Oscar for Jim Broadbent, playing Bayley, as well as nominations for Dame Judi Dench and Kate Winslet who both played Murdoch. Not a bad haul, you might think, for one demented old darling — even though, at the time, I did write of my own unease that this might not, in fact, have been quite the tribute she would have wanted. What none of us could have predicted then was that Bayley’s memoirs would start a vogue that finds us, a decade later, awash with a pornography of incontinence.
They’re all at it. The better-known rush to detail the decline of those whom they love or, at any rate, loved. Alan Bennett and Roy Hattersley weighed in soon after Bayley on their mothers, as did author Jill Murphy on hers, when she confided to an interviewer that the whole house was daily soaked in urine. More recently, Cliff Richard, Carol Thatcher and Fiona Phillips have gone public with their parents’ dementia, as did this week John Suchet, with his wife’s. Meanwhile the unknown compensate for their lack of fame by posing with their hollow-eyed charges for newspapers that really ought to know better including, in this month alone, the Times and the Independent.
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john ward
February 19th, 2009 8:40am Report this commentI'm sure Ms Sarler is right...but with Alzheimer's,the family is doomed to watch every stage of decay. I write about my father's condition, but the only revelatory part is the demonstration of government hypocrisy and cynical spin surrounding the whole area of dementia care.
Bleeding all over the carpet helps nobody - but looking underneath the carpet is very important.
www.notbornyesterday.org
John
February 21st, 2009 9:42am Report this commentTake daily curcumin (componentof curry)
the tablets are large and awful
but they work!
henry martin
February 23rd, 2009 11:20am Report this commentThis is a relevant and compassionate article, and one of the best I have read. I fear dementia more than cancer.
Lucy Harington
February 23rd, 2009 4:32pm Report this commentThank you Carol Sarla for this sensitive and challenging article. Yes, I can see victims of dementia seem to be paying twice for their terrible affliction. But, thinking about it, in addition, they may often be paying thrice because of the Government"s gerontophobic social policy. How else have we accepted that when dementia patients can no longer be cared for by their families and are means tested for residential care, interest earned on their life savings are calculated by social services at the nominal rate of 10% even in this present financial crisis, including that paid by premimum bonds or ISAs, which for the rest of us are tax free. Is this why the Government are suggesting that awareness of dementia should be taught in schools so that the young will learn to despise the old, even more than many do already, so that official discrimination against dementia victims may even become to seem deserved?
annabel frost
February 23rd, 2009 11:46pm Report this commentThank you Carol Sarler for this timely reminder that our last duty to a person loved but diminished is discretion. From the age of 13 I thought Iris Murdoch's novels were brilliant. The last three should never have been published. Bayley meant well but he should have hidden her and her later work from public view.
David Short
February 26th, 2009 12:30am Report this commentIf it's so wrong to parade the humiliations of Alzheimer's sufferers in the public papers, then why is it right for Sarler to repeat them second hand in the Spectator?
I hope she donated her fee to charity.
AM
March 7th, 2009 1:08pm Report this commentI agree with Ms Sarler. Poor Mrs Suchet has her problems paraded in public without her knowledge or understanding. Meanwhile Mr Suchet gets bag loads of sympathy. But did he think to consult with Mrs Suchet's first husband about he might feel too? Referring to her forgotten past life must have been so painful for him - but did Mr Suchet stop to consider that when pouring out his grief so publicly?
J
March 8th, 2009 11:31pm Report this commentI agree with AM. Very sad for all concerned but he shouldnt have gone public like that. Not very dignified
CT
March 10th, 2009 10:12am Report this commentI agree with both these people. Sorry for them both but he shouldn't have done it.
KM
March 14th, 2009 8:49am Report this commentDoes anyone actually believe that John Suchet's decision, or any other of these celebrities, to speak out about dementia was easy? Do you really think he didn't consider his wife, Bonnie's, feelings? Toil over whether she would have done the same if the roles were reversed? Mr Suchet spoke out because he wanted to highlight the help that he had from his Admiral Nurse, who are supported by the charity for dementia. He wanted all people affected by dementia to be aware of this wonderful charity and the work that they provide - without Government funding, I might add. Without brave people like him speaking out, dementia would still be taboo - let's bring the topic out of the shadows and into the light!
May I also correct Carol Sarler's figures - there are not 700,000 living with Alzheimer's in the UK. There are 700,000 living with dementia, of which there are over 100 types, the main ones being Alzheimer's, vascular dementia and lewes bodies.
suzanne
March 15th, 2009 10:22am Report this commentI agree with Annabel Frost. John Suchet could have used his public figure to very powerful effect to raise the plight of dementia sufferers and the need for more Admiral nurses, without being so indiscrete about his wife and her inability to dress herself etc -there is no dignity in that is there?
Alan G. Ampolsk
August 21st, 2009 11:50pm Report this commentAm coming late to this discussion but have just come across the article. Sorry, can't agree. My objections are here: http://www.metaphorcountry.com/dementia_nights/2009/08/why-blog-alzheimers-the-myth-of-dignity.html
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