Coleen Nolan suffered in agony watching her mum succumb to Alzheimer's and has now urged her own children not to watch her own decline - if she ever gets it.
Loose Women star Coleen Nolan said she's urged her children to leave her in a care home and "walk away" guiltless if she's ever diagnosed with dementia. Coleen, 60, was a member of the famous pop group The Nolans with several of her sisters but was shattered caring for her own mum Maureen's last few years living with Alzheimer's and not knowing who she was.
In an emotional interview on BBC Radio Stoke, after moving to a farm in North Staffordshire last year, she told how when her mum eventually passed away in 2007 aged 81 she felt "relief". And explaining how getting dementia herself is her biggest fear she said she has already told her three grown up kids to leave her in a care home and "walk away" if she is diagnosed with dementia, and to not feel guilty about it.
She said: "It's my biggest fear and I've actually said to my kids if it happens - god forbid - put me in a home and walk away, because I won't know and it's awful.
"Of course they're going 'like we're going to put you in a home and walk away' and I'm said 'I'm telling you if you decide to do that, don't ever feel guilty because that's what I want you to do … as long as it's a nice home'!"
Coleen, once married to actor Shane Ritchie, spoke on Wednesday about her own experience caring for Maureen who struggled with dementia for the last five years of her life.
Maureen would "have tantrums like a two-year-old," she said, as she also revealed she could not bear to help bathe her mum after her condition deteriorated.
She added: "The last two years it was really bad. And she didn't know us anyway. We had the guilt - I remember not wanting to go and see her. I would wake up and think 'I don’t want to go and see her' because it killed me.
"No child wants to put a parent in a care home but you couldn't leave her. She was having none of it she wanted to live on her own. We felt massive guilt."
She has previously supported fundraising initiatives for dementia research, in particular the development of drugs to slow down the effects of the disease.
She has also campaigned for cancer support after fighting skin cancer, losing her sisters Linda and Bernie to the disease - this year and in 2013 respectively - her sibling Anne has recovered from a cancer and her brother Brian, 70, recently revealed he has prostate cancer.
Coleen said her mum, who was a trained opera singer, began forgetting song lyrics but would get "really angry" when questioned about it.
She described spending the final years of her mum's life grieving her loss while she was still alive, explaining: "Having had many family members now with cancer, and losing them to that, my mum's condition was the most traumatic for me - and for us as a family.
"When my sisters had cancer they were still aware. You could talk about things and say your goodbyes and hear their wishes of what they wanted but with my mum she just didn't know us.
"We think my mum had it (dementia) quite a few years before it was diagnosed as little things were happening and trying to get her to go to the doctors was a nightmare.
"From the time we took her to the doctors and to the time when she passed (away) she never accepted it. My mum had the patience of a saint - you'd have to be with eight kids - but she got the quite violent form."
Coleen - who has two sons and a daughter - said that despite all the sadness associated with that period, there were still some funny moments.
Once she and sister Linda went to a coffee shop and she found her mum having a conversation with her own reflection in a mirror.
She said she believed watching musicals and family home videos had also helped her mum.
Coleen added: "We did try music and talking to her. I know there would be times when she'd be very quiet and just watching a video or a musical and she seemed at peace doing that. I don't know if it was 'going in' or helping."
In the end her mum went peacefully, which had brought her some comfort and she prayed she would go peacefully to sleep and not wake up.
She said: "I have to be honest certainly in the last year, every night I used to go to bed and go 'please if you do exist let her go to sleep'. And a year down the line she did in fact go to sleep.
"I got so much relief from that because she was out of her trauma. I felt bad telling people because it sounded awful saying I felt relief but I did - and I know she did.
"She hated it - she used to say 'I just want to go out and walk into the sea. I don’t want to be here."
She added that it had taken about a year to grieve her mum because whenever she thought of her she would remember her with Alzheimer's.
"I remember one day, thinking about her, and I thought about her young again like when I was a kid," she said. "Then all of a sudden the memories were lovely and I really grieved."
