My first husband, Roger Tudway, didn’t get on well with my father, who was worried – rightly – about his drinking, but Roger adored my mother. He had been instrumental in having her to stay with us when we were doing our house officer year in Hereford so that we could get her seen by my boss, an extremely kind and caring general physician. At that time her dementia was probably very early and was not diagnosed, but he reviewed her medication and her care for the colostomy. Most of all, he talked to her as a fellow doctor and with respect and sympathy. His approach was holistic, suggesting various things that she found helpful.

From 1964 everything began to unravel, though that is not how one sees it at the time. Roger and I had been living for some time in his parents’ garden, in a caravan. Although I loved his parents, who were always kind to me, I hated the set-up there. I didn’t think that Roger would ever break from them and deal with his drinking and depression while he was there. I was struggling with these huge problems in my marriage, though I wouldn’t have put it like that at the time, so I was very pleased that Roger had been offered a job as SHO in radiotherapy at The Red Cross Memorial Hospital in Taplow, Buckinghamshire.

I wasn’t too sure that radiotherapy was a good idea; it was his highly successful father’s field and smacked too much of identification and competition to me. However, I was pregnant by this time and happy to give up work, with no particular plans about resuming my career. We moved into a small flat, right by the hospital, which went with the job.

Just before Christmas, my mother came to stay. She had suffered a sudden panic attack when taken out in a car by some friends, becoming apparently lost and confused, screaming and crying until brought back to the familiarity of home. This seemed to me to be a classic ‘Goldstein catastrophic reaction’ requiring proper investigation, but she wasn’t getting any specialist care.

I was 8 months pregnant, with no medical connections anymore, unsure this time how to get her help, but the decision was taken for me. By this time my mother was very unsteady and she had a fall in our flat, cutting her head. I dialled 999 and sat with her head on my lap until the ambulance came, as I couldn’t lift her. In the Casualty Department, Roger and I persuaded the House Officer of the need for admission and full assessment. This resulted in a proper referral to the Middlesex Hospital, overriding her GP.

Dr. Janet Michael, her GP, was a lifelong friend and colleague of my mother and had been too close to see what in retrospect became obvious; my mother was suffering from dementia, probably arteriosclerotic and which had probably started at the same time and been the cause of her Parkinsonism. My mother had concealed it very well and we had concealed it from ourselves. As there was no cure this was very possibly a good thing, but I think my father then felt bad about the times he had got very cross with her for forgetting and losing things. He loved her so much and was so frightened at losing her that he had found this period of their relationship very hard.