Louisa Lawrenson is witnessing her husband slowly forget everything
WORDS: RACHEL TOMPKINS
Watching as my husband Jerry wowed a few of our friends with a magic card trick, I couldn’t help but laugh. Jerry was such a people person – he loved making everyone smile and thought nothing of producing a pack of playing cards, mid-conversation, to miraculously make someone’s chosen card end up stuck to the ceiling.
Jerry really was talented. An actor and singer, we’d met when we were both acting in the same West End theatre production, The Wood Demon, in 1997, and we got together four years later.
He was the kindest person I’d ever met and there wasn’t a day that he didn’t make me laugh. But in 2006, when our son Jack was still only a few months old, I began to notice changes in Jerry’s emotions and how low he seemed. He just wasn’t his usual happy self.
On one occasion, when Jack was about eight months old, we were in the car with him and Jerry’s two older sons from a previous relationship, waiting to board a ferry to go to France for a day out. I started singing and they all joined in. Suddenly Jerry turned around, anger etched on his face. ‘Could you all just be quiet,’ he snapped. ‘Stop making that noise!’
It was so out of character – the Jerry I knew would’ve outsung the lot of us. We all sat there in silence, shocked.
EARLY SYMPTOMS
Another night we were watching TV and Jerry picked up his tobacco pouch and pointed it as if it was the remote control. ‘What are you doing?’ I laughed. He started laughing too when he realised his mistake. I assumed it was just a mix-up.
In 2008 he went to the GP and was diagnosed with depression and prescribed antidepressants. The medication didn’t seem to help though and I continued to notice changes in his mood.
As the months passed, I started to notice other little things. Jerry wasn’t playing darts as well as he usually did, and wasn’t rolling his cigarettes properly either.
In 2009 we went to the GP. ‘You need to see a neurologist,’ she said. ‘Has anyone talked to you about Parkinson’s?’
We looked at each other in horror. That was something old people got. Jerry was only 45 – surely not?
But that same year, a neurologist confirmed it. ‘You’ve got Parkinson’s but there’s medication that will help,’ he said.
I broke down in tears and Jerry was in denial. ‘I’ll help you through this.’ I sobbed.
It turned out the emotional and mood changes he had experienced years earlier had been the start, and all of the confusion he’d experienced recently were signs too.
We dealt with it differently.
