My mother Jean Roycroft passed away on 10 September 2013, my birthday.

On 15 September 2013 I walked 50 kilometres along the river Thames raising money for the Alzheimer’s Society, this year I have committed to completing the London Marathon to raise money for Alzheimer's Research UK, a charity that I became aware of through a colleague of mine who lost her mum, Mary, to Alzheimer’s in 2010.

Little did I know then that my own mother would become one of the 820,000 people in the UK diagnosed with dementia, in her case a combination of Alzheimer’s disease and Vascular dementia. 

Dementia is a word used to describe a group of symptoms including memory loss, confusion, mood changes and difficulty with day-to-day tasks. There are many causes of dementia, with Alzheimer’s the most common. 

Over the last couple of years of my mother's life my brothers and sisters and their families saw our very active, fun loving mother slowly slip in to what we saw as a dark abyss from which there was basically no return. A chance discovery by one of my sisters of a book called Contented Dementia by Oliver James changed the way that we approached our mother’s symptoms.

Based on the thinking in that book, my sister Sally helped by her friend Ali gave our mother 24 hour one-to-one care at home , right up to the moment of her death, something which we will be eternally indebted to them for. 

There is at present no cure for this terrible condition, but I really feel that there is hope that in the not too distant future, some if not all the symptoms of dementia will be treatable. 

The statistics are chilling, 25 million of the UK population have a close friend or family member with dementia and as well as the huge personal cost, dementia costs the UK economy £23 billion a year, more than cancer and heart disease combined. Despite these figures, dementia research is desperately underfunded.

So the donation I hope you will make to sponsor me will help boost funds to find a cure for this creeping curse.

 

Thank you in advance for your support please give as much as you are able to help me hit my ambitious target of  £2424.48 which is double £1212.24 a not so random number as it was my mother’s date of birth....it worked last time, please help me make it work this time.