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Waiting for the green light
“The last incident was a few years ago, the week before Christmas. I went up to the butchers, and I was at the traffic lights waiting to cross a very busy intersection,” she says.
“I’m looking at the lights across the road and I’m thinking, repeating in my mind, ‘wait for the green light, wait for the green light, wait for the green light’. I saw the green light to say I could walk, but the green light was for the other direction – it was for the direction on my right,” she explains.
“But I’m confused, and I think the green light is for the way I’m going, so I step out. I felt someone behind me pull my arm back. There were cars coming very fast. I was very shaken. I rang the girls, just to hear a voice I’m familiar with.”
It's getting worse
Lesley Jackson, mother of two, was diagnosed with vascular dementia at age 50, after her second mini-stroke. Vascular dementia happens when there’s a problem with the blood supply to an area of your brain. The cells in the affected area of your brain don’t get enough oxygen or nutrients and start to die.
Vascular dementia can affect people of all ages, although it’s often associated with growing older. It is a progressive condition which means it will probably get worse over time.
“I can tell it’s slowly getting worse. I’m expecting anything at any time. I try to do memory puzzles and games, just to keep my mind active, but I’ve noticed it’s getting worse. On a bad day I can’t even put a sentence together. I try not to think about the future, but I can’t help it,” Lesley explains.
What are we doing to treat vascular dementia?
Professor Roxana Carare at the University of Southampton is more than just thinking about Lesley’s future. She is actively researching vascular dementia – for people like Lesley, and for the 150,000 people in the UK affected by this condition.
Professor Carare thinks vascular dementia happens because the brain can’t get rid of waste and fluid properly. The brain removes waste by draining it out of extremely thin pathways embedded in the walls of blood vessels. The Southampton team believes these pathways are not anchored securely to the blood vessel walls in vascular dementia.
In a joint project funded by us, the Stroke Association and Alzheimer’s Society, Professor Carare and her team are studying waste elimination in mice, and comparing them to human brains with vascular dementia. This work could lead to new treatments that target the drainage of waste from the brain, to stop or slow down vascular dementia.
“I am thankful to the British Heart Foundation, and other institutions, for investing in and raising awareness of vascular dementia. I really appreciate that,” Lesley adds.
Do you want to hear more from Professor Roxana Carare and Lesley Jackson?