Shownotes
Dr Chloe Fawns-Ritchie narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.
What happens when the health conditions you study for a living arrive in your own family?
Chloe, researches why people age differently, and here she tells the story of her mum's dementia, diagnosed at 61. A heart attack followed, and then a late-found, advanced bowel cancer. The diagnosis took 18 months. Along the way came a screening test scored above the cut-off because it was administered wrongly.
Later, dementia care and cancer care rarely seemed to speak to each other. The account shows how multimorbidity plays out in real care, and why people with dementia so often have cancer found late. It also covers what it means that drug trials routinely leave out people like her mum. Then it turns to the carer's side and the academic's side. Expertise turned out to offer little protection, and work was no use as a distraction. Productivity slipped, and grief now shows up in the data.
It ends with a gentle death and a slow return to a job she once loved.
https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-when-your-research-becomes-your-reality/
Author
Dr Chloe Fawns-Ritchie is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research explores how cognitive function and health influence each other across the lifespan, why people experience different rates of cognitive decline, and what this means for everyday life. She specialises in cognitive assessment, with particular interests in cognitive ageing, chronic pain and the effects of medication on cognition.
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