Dear John Suchet,

I've just seen you on the BBC breakfast news and I was saddened to hear the news that your wife Bonnie is suffering with dementia. I thought your account of your experience as a carer was heart wrenching and whilst it was clearly very difficult for you to discuss your circumstances I'm really glad that you did.

You have bounced dementia back into the spotlight which is a good thing...like you say like cancer of recent years (and this not to take any thing away from any cancer campaigns). Dementia is treated like the silent illness that it actually is...people shy away from it...and that isn't helpful in the fight against the illness.

I also didn't know about the Admiral Nurses supplied by For Dementia and I found that a really interesting idea...it needs to grow and we need to have an Admiral Nurse available to every dementia sufferer and their family on a *as needed* basis...because believe me - the need is great.

Like you, our family has lived with specter of dementia floating over us and I more than anyone in our family live in terror of it. You see my Ganny had it, her daughter (my Aunt) has it at the moment and I'm convinced it is stalking the female side of the family...as Aunty only had sons, and I've got one brother that leaves just me as the next generation female in our family and I'm frankly terrified.

I saw my Grandmother reduced from a vibrant, healthy, intelligent and witty woman to a woman who died in a nursing home unable to talk, walk or move... seemingly having had the life sucked out of her, trapped in the shell of her own useless body. She became almost unrecognisable to me towards the end, her personality had gone, the way she dressed changed according to the carer who had dressed her that morning, her hairstyle was wrong, make up was never applied and this was a woman who went nowhere without an assortment of lipsticks that would have put a make up artists toolkit to shame! Her smell changed, from roses and soap, to piss and sweat where she wasn't washed properly in the home and her clothes smelt simply of "institution" Every part of her fabric unwove in front of our eyes and I think *that* was the hardest strain of all. It all happens so very slowly over years and that *is* stressful. It's like you say John, you grieve for someone who is gone but still physically there and it's a protracted grief.

And what of the person who's actually suffering the dementia? You say they don't realise or remember things and that there world gets increasingly smaller and you have to adjust to fit their world not try to bring them back into this wider world. How wise Ian was to tell you that...that's exactly what it is.

The one thing we never did with Granny was to discuss her dementia and I never really know if she knew she had it. However I can remember on the evening she died I was instructed by my Father to sit with her and hold her hand whilst he spoke to the nurses. He told me not to be afraid and to just speak to her like normal and keep calm. ( We knew by this point she was dying and I'd expressed the fear to my Father that I didn't want to be there when she died.)

So I went into her room to find her lying on her bed, very still, as she had forgotten even how to move. I pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed...all the while I was dragging chairs, she didn't move and I really thought that she may have passed away already. I remember reaching out to hold her hand and as I held it in my two hands, cupped gently I felt the lightest of pressure as she squeezed my hand. This was my Granny, the woman I loved the most in my life, reduced to a shell, a husk...an empty void. It was hard, but I decided to simply talk to her as I would have done normally before the dementia. I spoke of all the times she'd taken me to the park as a youngster, how when we'd gone to the park with dog and my brother, the dog had sat on the back seat all the while growling at my poor brother as if to say "little child...come on my side of this car that *I* own and you're mince meat" I recalled how that dog had hated everyone, especially my brother for some reason. (mind you, my brother at that point hated dogs after being bitten by one, so the feeling wasn't exactly un-mutual! ) And I spoke of how we used to go to Batley Park Museum, walking through the woods to get there in the first place and how we both loved the Egyptian exhibit with the Mummy.

Just as I was coming to an end and telling her how I remembered all the sweet treats we used to take with us to the park and never told my Mother about for fear of her telling us off (baskets of Chocolate cakes, bottles of lemonade, slabs of toffee and home made Murray mints) for ruining our appetites...just as I was recalling this, I felt that featherlight squeeze again, looked up and saw her silently cry a big fat tear. She didn't move and was still looking up at the ceiling, but it struck me at that point as I wiped the tear away that she was trapped and could still hear what was going on around her and was either frustrated at not remembering or could in flashes remember it. Either way, I knew that I'd made a connection one last time with the Grandmother I loved so dearly and whom I had "lost" to dementia years earlier.

I whispered then to her "thank you" for giving me such wonderful happy memories and that if ever I had grandchildren I told her I would do exactly as she had. I told her I loved her and I left my Granny one last time, finding my Father outside in the corridor talking to one of the nurses.

I left there that day and My Granny died that evening with my Father at her side.

We don't talk seriously about it even today but I know he (My Father) fears the dementia as much as I do. His elder sister is currently in a home in Huddersfield and when he comes up from Wales to visit her, he won't go visit unless I go with him. This is not something I want to do but I do do it for him. I don't visit Aunty E when he's not here because I find it too hard to do as I know this is likely to be my fate as I age. And it's not something I'm looking forward to...it scares me if I forget someone's name or a place now and I'm only in my 30s...but that fear grips my heart and squeezes the blood out of it. It's a dark hand that hovers over our family ready to grasp at us and I wish I could avoid it, simply because I don't want my family to have to go through what we did with Granny and are doing to a lesser degree at the moment with Aunty E.

I know I can't avoid it at the moment until they find a cure and that seems an awful long way off, but in the meantime it's people like you John who use your profile to keep the topic in the public eye and help raise funds towards finding a cure...so for that, I don't think you have in anyway betrayed Bonnie by going on the tv to discuss your situation...quite the opposite. You've done the best thing you could possibly have done. For that I thank you John.