A "feisty" and "strong" nan from Wallasey died after a long battle with a rare disease.
Christina Parnell, known to her loved ones as Tina, died this summer after an eleven-year battle with Alzheimer's disease. Tina, who died in June aged 76, was diagnosed with the disease in 2011 after her daughter, Maria, sensed "things weren't right" with her once "feisty" and "confident" mum.
Maria said one of the cruellest things about the disease that took her mum's life was the loss of "dignity" that it caused, making her once "highly functioning" mum more quiet and less confident. She shared her mum's story with the ECHO in the hopes that it would raise awareness around the "cruel" disease.
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Maria, who has a son of her own, told the ECHO: "Mum had what's called early onset dementia, caused by Alzheimer's, which could be expected in your eighties, but she was in her sixties.
"She was diagnosed in her sixties but on reflection I think the signs were there before that. The disease is cruel in any scenario, but mum was highly intelligent and high functioning- that made it feel so much more cruel.
"She was really strong, really feisty. She was a widow so she did everything herself.
"Mum was a union rep at the DWP. She was very intelligent, she spoke fluent French and did all sorts in life, even living in London at one point and at another she led a team of up to 100 staff, managing them, dealing with their competing priorities and large work load. She really was quite quick."
Maria spoke about her mum's hesitancy to go to the doctor about her condition, which slowly worsened over time with her mum becoming more and more forgetful and confused at times. She said: "I'm her only daughter and I sensed things weren't right.
"It started off with forgetfulness. It was always things where you could just think 'oh she's just forgotten,' and write it off. And then later there'd be times when she'd be phoning up the police as she was confused.
"One of the worst parts was when she was aware that things aren't quite right and she was getting disorientated and forgetting things like house keys. That interim period was probably the scariest time for her because she'd had moments of clarity, and normality, then all of a sudden she would've forgotten where she was and forget other things.
"It was hard - my mum was a little worried and a little bit hesitant to go to the doctors. It was difficult to try and get her diagnosed and I had help.
"It started off with initial, cognitive tests. From those initial assessments it was clear that my mum had cognitive decline and then dementia.
"It's very difficult to see your loved one go through that, but you've got to get into their world and not get cross. The worst thing you can do with someone whose got dementia is to make them feel humiliated or different.
"If mum was talking about her past or the people that weren't there I'd just go along with it and try and make her feel okay. Every family member would do the same and would help her to feel safe, and to make them not feel bad about the fact that their brain is not as it was.
"The local community were really good too. They'd keep an eye out on her when I couldn't, and phone me up to let me know when mum was confused. Even the local bank helped out, sometimes mum would go in about a few times in one day forgetting that she'd withdrawn money and they'd let me know."
Maria is now raising money for the Alzheimer's Society, a charity dedicated to funding research into the disease. She had the idea before her mum's funeral in July, hoping people would donate in lieu of flowers.
She said: "I just thought I'd rather people gave money to the research instead of flowers, because it affects so many people that any contribution to the charities pioneering research is a good thing in helping us to understand Alzheimer's better."
You can find Maria's fundraiser here.
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