Remember When by Fiona Phillips review – an unsparing insight into early-onset Alzheimer's
Remember When chronicles, with illuminating candour, the changes that culminated in Phillips's diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's in 2022, at the age of 61. Billed as a memoir by Phillips herself, owing to her decline during the three-year writing process, it's really a co-production between her, her ghostwriter Alison Phillips (no relation) and Frizell, who provides fitful interjections. As such, it offers a rare account of the impact of Alzheimer's not just from the person who has it, but from their primary carer too.
Frizell initially attributed his wife's symptoms to the menopause, which can also present as low mood and memory loss. Both wondered if she had long Covid, having been infected with the virus during the first lockdown. It's a reflection of the insidiousness of Alzheimer's that neither of them managed to join the dots until comparatively late, even though Phillips's mother and father had developed the disease in their 50s and 60s respectively. She had even made documentaries about her parents' decline, and was an ambassador for Alzheimer's charities.
Yet, as this book makes clear, the memory loss that is intrinsic to Alzheimer's makes it unfathomable to the sufferer. How can you pinpoint what is going wrong with your brain when the main symptom is confusion? Among the early signs, Phillips reflects, was a feeling of flatness. She recalls going for a walk on Clapham Common in early summer 2018 and looking at other Londoners enjoying the weather. 'It was like looking through a double-glazed window on to another world of which I had no part. It was a strange sense of disconnection. Of seeing others laughing, enjoying the moment, while increasingly I felt, well, nothing. Just flat.'
At this point in the book, Phillips presses pause on the story of her illness to trace her early years growing up in Canterbury and, later, Southampton. Along with her childhood, we get a whistle-stop tour of her career in journalism: after starting out in local radio, she began working for Sky News and later got a job reporting for GMTV from Los Angeles. On her return to the UK in 1997, she succeeded Anthea Turner as co-host alongside Eamonn Holmes, interviewing prime ministers and Hollywood stars.
The intention of this determinedly breezy segment is clear: to let us know the fearless and successful person Phillips had been before Alzheimer's did its worst. Yet it is also revealing about the impossible juggle of fronting Britain's leading TV breakfast show and raising a young family, while caring for her parents through their own diagnoses. Her devastation at watching them disappear before her eyes is mirrored in Frizell as he observes his wife's incremental withdrawal from the world.
This sadness erupts into anger when he states: 'I wish Fiona had contracted cancer … It's a shocking thing to say, but at least then she might have had a chance at a cure, and certainly would have had a treatment pathway, and an array of support and care packages.' As it is, following diagnosis, the Alzheimer's sufferer and their family are largely 'left to their own devices. There is nothing more that can be done and you are left to cope alone.'
By the end of Remember When, Frizell's is the dominant voice, since Phillips no longer has the capacity to articulate her experience. Early in the book she says she doesn't want to become an object of pity, or for her story to be viewed as a tragedy. But there can be no happy ending here, no endnote of hope. Capturing the loneliness and sense of loss that occurs when a loved one is alive but no longer fully present, Frizell simply says: 'I miss her. I miss my wife.'
Remember When by Fiona Phillips is published by Macmillan (£22). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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