- Annemarie and John Logan have known each other since high school.
- At age 61, John was diagnosed with dementia and ever since then, Annemarie has been his caregiver.
- She is sharing her personal story and video to support dementia research at The Florey.
What it’s like to care for a loved one who has dementia
High school sweethearts Annemarie and John Logan had planned for an active retirement on a rural block with animals, a vegetable garden and above all, plenty of time. But they had to let those dreams go when Annemarie became John’s full-time caregiver after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 2 years ago.
While Annemarie knows all too well the heartache dementia brings, she is also heartened by work underway at The Florey to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s disease, to improve how we diagnose it and to develop treatments.
John was only 61 when he was diagnosed after his symptoms became impossible to ignore.
He was a highly-regarded property valuer, still years off retirement.
At the beginning I could see him struggling with computer tasks like uploads and downloads. Then he lost the ability to use the remote control for the TV, or make calls or text. He would blame it on other things, saying, ‘It’s the silly computer, it’s the people at work’.
He started to lose independent skills like the ability to make a cup of coffee.
“He’d pour hot water into the big Moccona jar of coffee instead of the mug. He was struggling to cope in the house on his own, leaving the stove top on. You’d come home and all four elements were raging red hot,” Annemarie said.
After a series of tests, they got the official diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
Although symptoms were already obvious by then, the news was a shock, especially to John.
“He actually went into a funk for about 2 days. He was just so depressed that this thing that he’d constantly been denying was true. He said, ‘no, they’ve got it wrong. They’ve got it wrong. I’m perfectly fine’.”
Annemarie retired early to look after John.
“John has days where he doesn’t know who I am. He’ll see himself in a mirror and have a chat. He’ll laugh and sees the ‘other guy’ is laughing. He says, ‘that’s a good guy’. It’s 24/7. He does not sleep through the night. He constantly wanders. He wakes other people up. He is going through delirium and some psychosis.”
About a year after diagnosis, she got a phone call to say John had gone missing while visiting a relative.
“He was gone for two nights. Things were looking really dire. They had the mounted division patrolling the parks along the river. You had the water police, you had SES, you had PSOs at railway stations, aerial flyovers,” Annemarie said.
Police found him 20km away. He’d been walking non-stop, had blisters on the soles of his feet, and was dehydrated to the point of kidney failure. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything, even though he had money to buy food. John spent a couple of nights in hospital recovering.
Some days, Annemarie feels like crying and wonders if she can continue being his caregiver.
But then the next day is a good day. He remembers who you are, and he can tell you he loves you.
Annemarie said not enough is known about Alzheimer’s and how it affects people.
“Why do they suffer from it?” she said, while visiting The Florey.
“To have something as simple as a blood test instead of all the tests we had to go through before John got that proper diagnosis would make it so much simpler for people. Imagine if we could have more time before this horror disease strikes the way it does.”
