On a bad day, Jenny forgets to call back customers, abandons paperwork mid-way, gets up to make a cup of tea and forgets what she’s doing. This is because Jenny has vascular dementia.
She is, however, determined to carry on doing what she loves best – selling holidays.
“Is today a good day?,” I ask, when we chat over Zoom on a rainy morning in March. “Well, it’s a Monday,” she laughs, “and that’s never a good day, with or without dementia.”
Refusing to be beaten
A sense of humour, says 71-year-old Jenny, is what keeps her going. That, and the fact she lives in London – “people don’t understand how expensive living in London is until you’ve lived here”.
So, how does someone with dementia continue working, particularly as a busy travel agent dealing with admin, queries and changing itineraries? It’s not always easy, admits Jenny, but she’s not yet ready to give up the career she loves.
Jenny began her travel career later in life after 23 years working for Harrods. In her late 40s – and, in her words, "fed up with the commute" – she decided to try something different. “I started working in this place in Bromley called Daybreak Travel. It was quite a big career change but I’m a saleswoman. I could sell ice to an Eskimo,” she chuckles.
Jenny realised very quickly that she “absolutely loved travel”. “I could still see myself going to work when I was old and grey with my Zimmer frame, blue rinsed hair and stockings.” Which is why when Jenny eventually left Daybreak Travel. She stayed working in travel, joining several different businesses before signing up as a homeworker for Holidaysplease in 2022.
It’s also why 27 years later, Jenny is still booking holidays and refusing to be beaten by dementia.
An intense headache
Her first sign that something was wrong was in Christmas 2019. “I was wrapping presents, I’d made a cup of tea, sat back down on my sofa, and suddenly had a pain go through my head like I’ve never experienced before. I was shaking. I was delirious.”
Jenny called 111 and was immediately admitted to hospital – cue a 19-hour wait in A&E “with no painkillers” – before a doctor informed her she’d suffered not one, but two ruptured brain aneurysms, a life threatening condition which causes blood to spill into surrounding brain tissue, placing excess pressure on the brain.
It was unclear what exactly caused the aneurysms. All Jenny knew was that she had to undergo an immediate operation where she was told she had a 30% chance of survival.
Despite this, the operation went well and Jenny recovered – although she now has platinum in her head: “my friends want to know if I’m worth any money!"
She should have spent six months recuperating, but the pandemic hit, and like all travel agents Jenny was suddenly faced with a raft of booking amendments, supporting clients, and overwhelmingly long days.
’I kept forgetting things’
Two years passed. And one day Jenny got in the car to visit a friend. “I was in the car and got to the end of my drive and I suddenly realised: ‘I don’t even know who I’m going to see’.”
“It scared me,” she admits. “And then I noticed that I had periods of forgetting things and losing things and I thought, I need to get this checked out."
An appointment was made with a neurologist, who then referred her to a neuropsychotherapist, who conducted a series of tests on Jenny, eventually diagnosing vascular dementia.
No one really knows what causes the condition, but medical research suggests pressure on the brain (such as from ruptured brain aneurysms) can increase and contribute to the likelihood of the disease.
Its progression varies. For some people the disease develops slowly. For others, symptoms can appear suddenly. For Jenny, the advancement of the dementia fortunately seems to be on the slower side. But two years on, she admits she’s noticed changes. “I struggle now,” she confesses. “I’m forgetting more things. It’s my short-term memory that’s the problem, my long-term memory still seems quite good.”
