Losing one parent to dementia is heartbreaking; losing both is almost unthinkable.
For Laurence Geller CBE, the experience of watching helplessly as both parents suffered with the cruel disease lit a fire inside him to prevent future generations enduring the same ordeal.
“They died six years apart,” Geller says. “My father had comorbidities. They probably triggered his dementia. After my father died, my mother let herself go, and allowed herself to have dementia, if you will. She couldn’t while she was caring for him.”
Geller, a long-time philanthropist who made his fortune in the hotel industry, is speaking to the JC shortly after the conclusion of the Geller Commission, an independent review into clinical pathways for people living with dementia in the UK.
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