Monday Australian story Profiles Podcaster Jim Rogers, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 55.
This episode contains Podcast Co-host Hamish Macdonald.
Jim Rogers thought that Alzheimer’s was the disease of an old person … until he was diagnosed at the age of 55 and became one of the 29,000 Australians who live with dementia with younger start.
A more than lifelong character with the GAB gift, Jim would never take his diagnosis calmly. He collaborated with Omroep Hamish Macdonald in front of the podcast and spread the message that although dementia is terminal and incurable, you can slow the progress and convey most of the time.
“You can live well with dementia,” Jim tells the Australian story. “You have to adapt to it.”
Now he is praised as the “pin-up boy” for dementia.
“Dementia has just been seen as a death sentence,” says Hamish Macdonald. “You get old, you lose your marbles and then you die. That’s why I think Jim’s contribution is so critical. He starts this conversation in a way that I think we’ve never had before.”
Jim has always lived in life.
He migrated to Australia with his wife Lorna and three young children in the nineties, but three years later Lorna developed melanoma and was dead within a few months. The children on his own parenting kept Jim busy, so he was not looking for another partner when he took a much needed holiday. Then he met Tyler and fell in love.
“I started to think, this is ridiculous,” Jim recalls. “Like this is a man to start with. I have children. I just can’t do this.”
But the connection they both found was too strong and they are still together, 25 years later.
Since his diagnosis three years ago, Jim had to give up his driver’s license and a job that he loved. Initially he sank in depression, but in the end he decided to get the most out of time. He is now devoting himself to challenging the stigma that surrounds dementia.
“Jim is someone with a lot,” says Hamish Macdonald, “and my feeling is that he knows that there is a limit to how long he can continue to give to others, but as long as he can, he does it as much as he can.”
8 p.m. Monday at ABC.
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