{"id":267454,"date":"2025-11-17T08:16:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T08:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/267454\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T08:16:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T08:16:08","slug":"pauline-quirke-still-funny-and-recognises-us-say-family-in-dementia-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/267454\/","title":{"rendered":"Pauline Quirke still funny and recognises us say family, in dementia update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve said they first got an inkling something might be wrong with Quirke in November 2020, after she received a script.<\/p>\n

“She started reading it and she phoned me on that day and said, the words are not going in. That’s where it started,” he said.<\/p>\n

Their reaction after the diagnosis was “disbelief, really”. <\/p>\n

“We looked at each other and went, ‘Can’t be, it’s long Covid. Got the flu’.”<\/p>\n

Charlie added he was “quite surprised that this was possible in a woman in her 60s, and it can happen to people in their 50s, people in their 40s, so it’s something you have to deal with and learn about”.<\/p>\n

Dementia is described as “young onset”, external<\/a> when symptoms develop before the age of 65. It most often develops in people between the ages of 45 and 65 but can affect people of any age.<\/p>\n

Asked what stage Quirke is at in her dementia journey, Steve said: “We don’t know. She’s still funny. She’s talking. She’s happy.”<\/p>\n

“Is it four years, eight years, 10 years, 12 years, 20, who knows?” <\/p>\n

Charlie added: “And that’s the problem, no one tells you. <\/p>\n

“My mum knows exactly who we are. Every time she sees all of us, she smiles, laughs, says ‘I love you’, says ‘hello’.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steve said they first got an inkling something might be wrong with Quirke in November 2020, after she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-267454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}