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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Nicci Gerrard

A decade ago, my father suffered alone and in misery. Why do dementia sufferers still face the same fate?

A selection of headlines from Nicci Gerrard’s Observer articles during her campaign for dementia rights.
A selection of Nicci Gerrard’s Observer articles during her campaign for dementia rights. Composite: The Observer

Everyone has their own special way of grieving. Mine turned my life upside down.

On 26 November 2014, two days after the funeral of my father, I sent a slightly unhinged email to the Observer saying there was a piece “I want (need) to write… My very lovely and beloved father died two weeks ago, after a long and distressing time suffering from dementia. He had been in gradual decline for more than a decade but went into hospital in February, and while there seemed to go off a cliff: his deterioration was catastrophic and when he came out a few weeks later he was emaciated to the point of starvation, immobile, bed bound, incapable of stringing words together, hardly able to recognise anyone.”

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