Yvonne and Fred Browning’s story

YODAT’s Yvonne and Fred Browning shared their story with Alzheimers.org.nz.

After living with dementia for the past ten years, Fred’s mantra is, “there’s no use worrying about something you can’t change.”

Fred also lives by the saying, “you’re only as old as you let yourself get”, so he and wife Yvonne keep themselves young with an active and social lifestyle.

Keeping busy isn’t a new thing for Fred. He grew up in a family with 6 siblings in rural Central Otago, and he and Yvonne enjoyed several spells living overseas in Australia and England.

It was only when they returned to Wellington in 2007 that the couple started noticing changes in Fred’s memory when Fred, an avid DIY-er, was busy renovating a house.

“There was a lot of, ‘You never told me that or, when did that happen?’” Yvonne says. They also noticed that Fred seemed to procrastinate a lot, and was relying more and more on others to help him make decisions.

Yvonne’s twenty years experience in psychogeriatric care meant that getting a diagnosis “was probably quicker” than most people. But still, it took a couple of years before it was confirmed that Fred had dementia, and even longer before the couple felt comfortable telling people about the diagnosis.

Read the rest of the article here: https://alzheimers.org.nz/stories/fred-and-yvonnes-story/