West End star Ruthie Henshall has shared the feelings of guilt she has over not recognising the symptoms of dementia in her mum.
During an appearance on Loose Women, the performer revealed she initially thought her mother was drinking alcohol or experiencing a decline in her mental health when signs of dementia appeared.
"I think the thing that makes one feel so guilty," Ruthie began, "Is not recognising the signs because you think it's something else."
Sharing that her mum "liked to drink", Ruthie explained that in the early stages, she thought her mum's dementia symptoms were "because she'd returned to the hooch".
"I thought that the slurring and falling over was because she was drinking, and it wasn't - she had Lewy Body dementia," she said.
According to Dementia UK, Lewy body dementia is an umbrella term for a set of "complex and challenging" conditions that can be mistaken for Alzheimer’s disease due to similarities in symptoms.
Lewy bodies are abnormal clumps of protein that develop in nerve cells in the brain, building up there and eventually affecting movement, visual perception, sleep and alertness.
As her mum's falls became more frequent, Ruthie wondered where she was "hiding" the alcohol she believed she was consuming. Realising she wasn't actually drinking, Ruthie said, "You go through that guilt."
Looking back to the time her mum began to deteriorate, Ruthie recalls the other signs she didn't link with dementia at the time.
"If my dad went out of the house, she'd leave messages," Ruthie shared, and the messages would often repeat the same word, "please," over again. "What is this all about?" she questioned at the time.
"Because she suffered with mental illness, it blurred slightly," she said of the difficulty distinguishing between dementia and the things she mistook it for.
Ruthie began to piece together the puzzle when "I really started seeing her forgetting things."
She concluded, "It's just like everything got bigger," and she knew there was more to what was happening.
The Loose Women presenters comforted Ruthie by saying it was "understandable" that she didn't immediately realise her mother had a dementia diagnosis.
Her mum had Parkinson's and Lewy body dementia is a term for both dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson's dementia.
With Lewy body dementia, cognitive changes will usually happen first. With Parkinson’s dementia, physical changes are usually noticed first, which is the case with Ruthie's mum's falling and slurring.
According to Dementias Platform UK, Lewy bodies will affect the part of the brain that controls movement in those with Parkinson's. Early symptoms include tremors, shaking, rigid muscles, shuffling, stooping, and trouble initiating movement.
The platform says, "Unfortunately, because of the overlap between Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, Lewy Body Dementia is often misdiagnosed," making it harder for Ruthie to see what was happening to her mum.
