Ed Balls opens up on caring for mother with dementia
Ed Balls has confessed the "bewildering" struggle of watching a loved one experience dementia.
The Good Morning Britain host was interviewing Shameless star Anne-Marie Duff - whose 54-year-old brother Eddy was diagnosed with dementia in his early 40s - when he opened up about his own experience of caring for his mother.
Credit: 'Good Morning Britain' / ITV / ITVX
Video transcript
ANNE-MARIE DUFF: He just walked into the GPs surgery and said, I don't know what's wrong with me, something's desperately wrong with me and I'm really afraid.
ED BALLS: Woah.
ANNE-MARIE DUFF: And Dr. Taylor-- name check, she's so incredible-- called me up. I was at the National Theater doing a play. I'd just come off stage. And she said, I'm just here with Eddie now and I'm going to refer him to the neurology hospital. So we were very lucky. Although we'd had that journey of good few years before we got to that crisis point, we were very lucky then that she actually could see it for what it was.
ED BALLS: It's brilliant the GP did that. That is quite unusual.
My mum has had dementia now for almost 20 years, and it started in her 60s rather than 40s, which is kind of more unusual. But the problem is that none of us have any experience, do we? As whether it's a husband and wife or son or daughter, we don't know how to deal with this, because most of us never have come across it in our lives before. So it is bewildering and it is so hard to find where to go to ask.
ANNE-MARIE DUFF: There's no prognosis.
