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Motor Neurone Disease

People's stories

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Mary - Interview 04

Mary - Interview 04

Age at Interview: 59
Sex: Female
Background: Mary is a pharmacy assistant, married with 3 adult children. Ethnic background/nationality: White British.

Brief outline:Mary is the wife of man diagnosed with MND a year before interview (2003). (Couple also interviewed together - see Jack's story MND03).

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Even before diagnosis she noticed her husband had become forgetful and slow. The family described it as 'dithery'.
Print We went to Ireland last April and while we were in Ireland I noticed many things. I noticed that he would forget where we were going. And one day he went right past my mother's house. And he would laugh at anything. It was very strange. Another day we were out and we were going to a garden centre and he had forgotten where the garden centre was, even though we had been there many times before. So this really started getting me worried. And I thought actually it was a brain tumour or it was Alzheimer's. I really thought that. He's much, much slower. He's got very slow. And like last year before we knew he had this complaint we always thought he was getting so dithery. That's all I can describe it. And our sons used to say “Gosh, Mum, Dad's getting so dithery. It's because he's not doing anything and his brain is stagnating” and all the rest of it. “He ought to be, you know, start doing something.” The voice is like he's got a cold. When I speak to him on the phone it's like an old man. That's how I can describe it. He's like an old man on the phone. He spoke to my brother-in-law. He thought it was his father, because he sounded just like his father.

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