I want to help prevent memory loss in elderly

A WOMAN is running a course in Goring about memory loss prevention after spending years caring for her parents.

Sally Turner wants to help other carers who are looking after relatives with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The course will take place at the Hub, a community support charity based in the Arcade, every Wednesday in January, starting next week.

Ms Turner, 65, who divides her time between Goring and Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, has been a carer for her mother, Joyce Wybrow, 98, since 2016.

Before her mother’s decline, she and her brother Tim also cared for her father, Sidney, who suffered from Alzheimer’s for 12 years before he died in 2015.

Ms Turner described the disease as “the long goodbye”.

She said: “If you’re a spouse who has loved that other person all your life and they start unlearning something, it’s just the worst, it’s horrible, really horrible.

“It’s also very difficult to understand because all our lives we’ve been learning things so to unlearn stuff like how to put on your trousers without putting them on inside out is just so strange.”

Ms Turner, who worked in adult education for many years, is currently taking a course in brain longevity with the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation of America and has also been teaching chair yoga at The Hub for two years.

She wanted to educate herself and those around her because they felt “utterly abandoned” when her father died.

“Our family and mum just had to cope and we had to support her,” said Ms Turner.

“All through her eighties mum looked after dad and it was horrible for her because he wasn’t easy to help.

“Because once you get into the psychology of Alzheimer’s or dementia, you realise that a lot of nice people become awkward.

“Well, Dad got awkward because he hated having to ask for help and he hated not to be able to do things for other people, which is what he’d done all his life. Now he was having to be helped by his own wife. He was a really lovely man but it was difficult for my mum.

“It was very hard for her to see him unlearning something every day and she was very short-tempered with him. There was really nothing available to help.

“Eventually mum just couldn’t cope any longer as she was exhausted and then she started to decline as well.

“We kept saying to mum ‘You’re depressed’, and her answer would be ‘No, no, I’m not depressed, I know what depression is’ because she had lost a baby at birth.

“She thought that was depression and this couldn’t possibly be as bad as that because nothing can really be as bad as losing a child.

“At first, we had some carers come in on a daily basis to make sure she was eating. Then we realised that they weren’t sorting out the fridge and it was disgusting.

“It got to the point where we had to have full-time care because mum was not responding to things.

“She had full-time care for about six years and then covid hit and we couldn’t get good care. I said to Tim, ‘Why don’t we just take it in turns and do a month each?’ It has been really hard for us because it has been 25 years in all.”

Ms Turner said there had been a lot more education about dementia in the past 20 years but more needed to be done.

“Most of us either have a relative affected by memory loss and dementia or know someone who is dealing with the issue,” she said.

“Our towns and villages are urged to be more ‘dementia friendly’. Charity day centres have been created to help with the burden of the care required by families and social services and local authorities are doing their best to provide essential care despite the limited budgets available to them.

“There are a several charities which devote their efforts to providing palliative and practical help.

“Meanwhile, a plethora of diverse organisations are online and in the community offering a huge variety of help to those caring for someone with dementia.

“Almost all these organisations give assistance to carers and sufferers and focus on the hope of an eventual pharmaceutical intervention which will deliver in the form of a single pill, such as Aricept.

“In the past a variety of medications have been available and their focus has been to slow down the progress of the disease. What nobody is really talking about is what causes this awful, slow, lingering disease where friends and relatives are powerless as they stand on the sidelines and watch their loved one slowly fade away.”

Ms Turner runs a private practice as a therapist and is qualified to provide effective therapeutic interventions for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

She is inspired by the ancient spiritual and physical recommendations of yoga sage Patanjali and by the latest research into mindfulness and neuroscience.

Now she wants to work with Nicola Chessher, the new manager of the Hub, who recently completed an MSc in psychology and neuroscience of mental health, to help smash the barriers which prevent people from living longer and better.

Ms Turner said: “I am aware how low expectations about ageing can be self-limiting and I am committed to changing long-held beliefs that can hold us back from living a rich and fulfilling life at any age.

“By getting on board with this initiative you will not only be helping future generations but perhaps even equipping yourself and your family with the essential information for living longer and better.”

Students on the course will learn about the critical points in the life of those over 60 who may be exposed to a high risk of dementia due to events such as retirement, bereavement, falling or breaking bones, living alone, depression, an operation, time spent in hospital, divorce, inability to be active and stress.

They will learn about the four main pathways by which you can address memory loss in its early stages.

There will be eight “Living Longer and Better Champions” and places will be offered to those who may be interested to take on board the information and disseminate it to others.

Ms Turner said: “Ultimately, it would be lovely if we could get younger people interested, so that eventually primary school children are educated on how to prevent this happening to them.”

To sign up for the course, call Sally on 07786 931263.