My beloved wife had dementia symptoms I didn’t spot. Don’t make that mistake, says JOHN SUCHET

The first ‘tangible sign’ that John Suchet’s beloved wife had dementia came as the couple prepared to board a flight to France.

They were at the departure gate at Stansted airport when Bonnie said she was ‘nipping to the loo’, the veteran broadcaster recalls.

He waited and waited. The other passengers boarded, but no Bonnie.

Finally, there was a call for him on the airport tannoy.

‘She was just standing there at the help desk smiling sweetly, and said: “Oh thank goodness I’ve found you!”‘ says John, whose long and distinguished career as a journalist included presenting the ITN News at Ten for 17 years.

John and Bonnie hastily took their seats on the plane – as they did so, John recalls thinking: ‘Something must be going on here, but goodness knows what it is.’

The words Alzheimer’s and dementia never entered his head, he now admits. But looking back, he now recognises her forgetfulness that day was one of several warning signs in the three years running up to her eventual diagnosis in 2006, aged 64, including shopping for groceries only to return with 12 pots of yoghurt.

‘It’s natural instinct to dismiss incidents such as these as a momentary lapse of concentration,’ he says. ‘After all, who hasn’t forgotten a face, an email address or where they left the car keys? When you live with someone you just step in and answer for them.’

John Suchet with his second wife Bonnie. The couple were married for 30 years before Bonnie passed away in 2015

John and Nula Black married in 2016. Nula’s first husband, James Black, a television director and writer, died from frontotemporal dementia

Today, he’s keen to emphasise to anyone else who may find themselves in a similar situation how vitally important it is not to dismiss these kinds of hunches or doubts.

‘Ask for help even when you think it’s too early to,’ he stresses. ‘Ask if you’re worried. Whether it’s a spouse or someone really close to you, stop making allowances.’

Although the first port of call should be your GP, you should also insist on brain scans or further referrals if still in doubt, he says. Looking back, he wishes this is something he’d appreciated himself, not least so he’d known what he was dealing with and been able to seek help sooner.

‘Getting the diagnosis is a major part of the problem, because you go on for so long without seeking help,’ he says.

A lack of diagnosis also has consequences for the carer, something he’s at pains to stress.

‘The person with the disease is the priority. But the important thing about dementia is it’s the carer who can often suffer more than the person with it.

‘Very often the carer will die before the spouse. I know of cases where this has happened.’

Initially, John tried to care for Bonnie at home, with the help of Admiral Nurses (specialist dementia nurses supported and trained by the charity Dementia UK). But in 2009, he took the heartbreaking decision to move her to full-time care in a home.

To this day, he’s not sure whether the ‘wonderfully calm, placid, easy-going’ Bonnie ever realised she had dementia.

‘From the day she was diagnosed, till the day we lost her, she never mentioned the A word or the D word once,’ he says.

It’s ten years since Bonnie died and John is now enjoying his ‘second career’ as a presenter and writer on Beethoven and classical music. His latest book, In Search Of Beethoven – A Personal Journey, is out in paperback in August.

But he still finds it deeply painful to talk about how the disease robbed him of the glamorous woman he’s described as ‘the love of my life’, and to whom he was married for 24 years.

‘It was just horrendous. They’re slowly vanishing before you, slowing losing their personality.

‘Time heals up to a point… then you get “ambushes”, whether it’s a book, a film or a place that’s mentioned and it all comes back,’ he says.

The most recent ‘ambush’ was the tenth anniversary of Bonnie’s death on April 15, 2015, a memory that John admits is still raw. ‘It never goes away,’ he says.

He’s since remarried, to Nula, whose first husband James Black, a television director and writer, died from frontotemporal dementia, a rarer form of the disease, aged 68, in 2014.

The couple originally met as both Bonnie and James were being looked after in the same care home. ‘There are still four people in this relationship because it was this that brought us together,’ says John.

John and Nula, an artist and designer, are now united in campaigning to raise awareness of dementia, its toll on carers and the lack of adequate care.

Although both Bonnie and James were diagnosed around 20 years ago, John and Nula are concerned that little has changed since.

‘There is a distinct lack of care,’ says John, citing lack of diagnostic tools and specialised services as well as support for hard-pressed carers.

‘Today, one in three of us will get dementia and recently it passed cancer as the biggest killer in the country – so why isn’t there more support for carers?’

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