Like Marge, I'll be 40 this year and along with her and so many others, I have a parent who is living with dementia.

The photo above is of my Mum, Christine. The symptoms of Alzheimer's arrived quite young for Mum, before she'd had much of a chance to enjoy her retirement. For a few years after she was diagnosed we were still able to enjoy her intellect, wisdom and sense of humour, and have some cracking adventures together too. But it's getting much harder to reach her now through the fog of dementia. It's hard for a fiercely independent person to become so dependent on others. And it's a hard thing to miss someone when they're still here.

Mum had been worried about symptoms for years before she eventually went to the doctors. Like many people, she was afraid to hear the diagnosis as she felt there was no hope of treatment. This is changing now because of the research of organisations like ARUK.

Alzheimer's research receives 13 times less funding than cancer research. At present in the UK, 2/3rds of people with dementia have to fund their own care. We urgently need research to help find ways to prevent the conditions that cause dementia and to treat it.

Here's what your sponsorship can do:

£20 raised pays for 1 hour of pioneering dementia research

£100 raised could provide the tools for scientists to map 10,000 genes in minute detail, identifying targets for the development of new
treatments

£500 raised will cover the cost of a sensitive brain scan for a patient involved in a research study, tracking the effectiveness of new
drug treatments, improving diagnosis and better understanding how
diseases like Alzheimer’s wreak their havoc in the brain

£1000 raised will pay for reagents, unique chemicals that are crucial for successfully growing cells in a laboratory ready for disease study

£2500 raised will allow researchers to buy synthetically made amyloid, to better understand this hallmark Alzheimer’s protein in the lab

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