For get me not - DEBBIE'S FLOWERS FOR HER SOULMATE

While nursing her dear husband through a devastating illness, creativity blossomed

- Fleur Guthrie

Initially it was the small things that Debbie Sutherland noticed – things that made her question whether husband Mark was having a few more “senior moments” than usual. Not being able to find the letter “F” on the keyboard or pegging up laundry oddly on the clothesline.

When Debbie would read his emails and social media posts, she would spot a number of spelling errors, when he was usually such a great speller. Yet he was now having difficulty remembering how to write even the simplest of words such as his own name.

But for someone who at the time was only 53 and a former Olympic coach, Mark (known as Sully) put it down to the stress of being self-employed as a high-performance business trainer.

Two years later in 2017, Debbie spoke to his doctor and asked, “Surely this can’t be just stress?” She then met with a neurologist, who immediately dismissed her fear of early-onset dementia, replying that Mark was too young and he was simply showing symptoms of depression.

“As time went on, I started feeling more and more frustrated with him that he could not pull himself out of this ‘stress state’, just like he had helped many of his clients get out of theirs,” recalls Debbie from her Hamilton home.

“I used to say, ‘You have all these tools, why don’t you use them?’

“One day, when Mark was presenting a workshop, he went to write up on the whiteboard the word ‘reputation’, but he could not remember how to spell it. One of the participants came to his aid and took over writing for him.