Strictly Come Dancing star Arlene Phillips has opened up about her fears of developing Alzheimer’s after caring for her father Abraham who died from the disease in 2000
The BBC Strictly star is opening up on her father’s Alzheimer’s fears after her dad was diagnosed with the deadly disease.
Arlene Phillips’ dad Abraham, a former barber, began showing signs of the illness a decade earlier when Arlene was in her late forties – attempting to make tea in the kettle, placing empty pans on a lit stove, appearing bewildered at his daughter’s home near his flat. She was working tirelessly on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s revamped Starlight Express in the West End, while also raising two daughters, Alana, now 45, and newborn Abi, now 34.
Now, Arlene has shared her fears over the disease, revealing she’d go to Dignitas if she was diagnosed. “My friends and I talk about this a lot. I think if I had Alzheimer’s I’d like to go to Dignitas,” she said. “So many people are against that, but it would be my decision. I don’t ever want my daughters to go through what I went through.”
Arlene cared for her father throughout his final years and she has now shared the heartache over watching her father Abraham succumb to Alzheimer’s, dying at 89 in 2000. She said: “I’ve watched someone go slowly, slowly, slowly from smart, snappy, bright to their every thought vanishing and becoming a non-functioning human being.
“It’s like watching a train going into a tunnel and by the time it emerges on the other side, it’s completely transformed. It’s heart-wrenching to have them gaze at you with no hint of recognition. You wonder, ‘What about all the times you embraced me? When you conversed with me? When you enjoyed me reading to you?’ All vanished, yet someone has to feed you to keep you alive.”
She continued: “Dad always used to tell me, ‘When I get old, I want to be like an animal, to wander into the forest, lie down and drift off. ‘ But he wasn’t granted that. Before work, during my lunch break and immediately afterwards, I’d dash to Dad’s with his breakfast, lunch and dinner. I attempted to arrange Meals on Wheels but he wouldn’t allow anyone else in.
“Then late at night, I’d return just to ensure he was in bed and safe,””she told The Times. “I was at sixes and sevens. It was a very challenging period.” Her partner, set builder Angus Ion, whom she met while filming Freddie Mercury’s I Was Born to Love You video, tried to lend a hand. “But dad only wanted me.”
New research reveals the UK’s 5.8 million unpaid caregivers are facing a hidden health crisis themselves, with more than half reporting a decline in their physical or mental health due to their responsibilities. And that’s why Arlene encouraged carers to prioritise their own health during last week’s Caring for Caregivers week.
At the time, Arlene exclusively told The Mirror said: “Caring for a loved one is one of the most difficult roles anyone can take on, both mentally and physically. Millions of unpaid carers work tirelessly, sacrificing their own needs to care for others, forfeiting sleep, their own hobbies and socialising due to their responsibilities.”
The daughter of a barber and a housewife, Arlene began dancing as a young girl in Prestwich, Lancashire, and always harboured ambitions to become a ballet dancer.
“I came from a very poor background and was the middle child with my older brother Ian and younger sister Karen,” she recalled. “When I was 15, my mum got leukaemia at a time when nobody seemed to know what it really was and in between going to hospital for blood transfusions she wanted me to stay off school to look after her. My dad wasn’t well at the time, and my brother was studying so I took care of mum, washed her and looked after the house. I found it hard going back to school because I’d missed so much. I was lost.”
Arlene paid for her own dance classes with money earned doing a paper round and was adamant she should keep Saturdays for herself. But one day her mother asked her to miss her dance class to look after her, a request Arlene ended up refusing. “I didn’t want to miss dancing and so I said one of the others had to do it,” she says.
“That guilt, which so many carers feel, has stayed with me to this day. There are so many child carers in the UK and for a while I was one of them.”
Rita died aged 43, just three months after her diagnosis. Arlene wasn’t allowed to attend her funeral and was sent straight back to school.
But despite this, she found herself in the role of carer once again as an adult when her father Abraham, who had been unwell with blood clots when her mum was dying, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He eventually died aged 89 after battling the disease for more than a decade.
“He didn’t want anyone coming in the flat to look after him apart from me,” says Arlene. “People with dementia can be very frightened. He always thought people were breaking into his home. I organised things like meals on wheels but he wouldn’t let them in.
“So it all fell on me to do everything for him, as it often does with so many people looking after relatives with dementia, who only trust their loved ones to care for them. I did it for 10 years, determined not to put him in a care home but eventually I had to. I was exhausted and broken by it and, again, there is that guilt carers feel.”
