Home and Away star Jessica Redmayne reveals the devastating reality of losing her mum to early-onset dementia and why Australians must stop fearing the disease.
It’s the “elephant in the room” actor Jessica Redmayne wants everyone to talk about.
The 33-year-old, who lost her beloved mum Christine to dementia two years ago, said we need to be openly talking about the disease just as we do about other medical conditions.
“I think it really does get shoved under the carpet because people are afraid of it, because there is no cure.” the Home and Away star told news.com.au.
“But if we are not afraid of it, and if we do implement the things like maintaining a healthy diet and looking after our brain then we can make a difference.
“We need to – for the sake of a better word – shove it down people’s throats and go ‘this is serious’.
“We can’t hide away from it and we need to take care of our brains.”
Redmayne – who is throwing her support behind news.com.au and The Australian’s Think Again campaign – said spreading awareness about the condition is more important to her than her blossoming career.
“Being a younger person, I feel like it’s what I was destined to do,” she said.
“I am very fortunate to work in the industry that I do, and the cherry on top of that is that I can spread awareness far and wide because people my age, hopefully, will hear me.
“I think about it quite often and I think it’s more important than my career itself.”
Redmayne said her mother had started showing early signs of the disease when Jessica was about 19, but it took another five years for her to be formally diagnosed.
“I had seen my nanna have dementia and live in a home and show similar symptoms and that’s why our family, we knew what was going on,” she said.
“As a young teen to diagnosis to be honest it was the elephant in the room and we didn’t really acknowledge the fact that she was declining.
“We just kind of carried on with it. Once we had the diagnosis and it was on paper – that it was real – that’s when we started to put things in play to figure out how to better care for her and what the future was going to look like.”
Redmayne plays the popular character of Harper on Home and Away.
And that’s when Redmayne said things got even harder for herself and dad Paul.
“It was left to my father and I to seek help,” she said.
“I quite literally joined an online university degree with the University of Tasmania to learn what dementia was because I didn’t actually understand what was happening to her brain.
“I knew that she was forgetting things, I knew her personality had changed dramatically because she was a very charismatic person and that decreased.
“But I’m a proactive person and I went out and I sought the people, whereas it’s not very readily available to people if they have no idea what they are doing,” she said.
“Because Mum was in her 50s we didn’t know how to navigate even talking about later in life when she was going to need full-time care. I remember Dad going to the council and they literally turned him away and said ‘sorry we can’t help you. We don’t know’.
“And then I think it was just through talking to more people we found someone that connected him to a community group which was like-minded people all going through quite literally the same experience as us and so that way we started to meet people and that was all run by Dementia Australia.
“But it did take us a very long time, and when I say a long time I mean it took us years to find those resources,” Redmayne, who is now a Dementia Australian ambassador said.
Despite the heartbreak of watching her mother’s decline, Redmayne said she did not regret a single minute spent with her mum.
“Once someone has been diagnosed don’t just assume their life is over then and there – because it’s not,” she said.
“They are not useless they are still there. Once you get to the final stages of their life obviously it’s very hard to move and communicate but when they are in their early stages, and when I say early stages that could be between five to eight years after diagnosis, they are still moving, they are still active and they can still talk to you.
“You can still have a rich life with them.
“You can live and it’s been proven there are people living a very full life.
“It’s important to encourage people to not be afraid of the disease. The disease is brutal but don’t be scared of it because that person is still there.
“Whether they can even say your name or not they are still there and being there for them will give not only them a richer life, it will give you a richer life.
“I don’t regret a second I spent with my mum even when she would just lie there and a lot of the time couldn’t even make eye contact but that was really important to both of us.
“And I think it takes a lot of courage. So I would encourage people to be brave and not be in denial or be afraid of the disease. I know that’s so much easier said than done but it really is something important.”
Redmayne revealed former Home and Away star Lynne McGranger came to her more than a year ago with the idea of her character Irene leaving the show following a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
