Dean Windass talks about his 'scary' dementia diagnosis

Evening Standard

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00:00Well, there's a lot of footballers always say,

00:01no, go do it, and they won't do it.

00:03Because they don't want to know the outcome.

00:05I wish I wouldn't have gone in it now, but it's happened.

00:08You wish you hadn't done this?

00:09Yeah, because then I wouldn't have known, would I?

00:12And it would be better not to know?

00:14Yeah, it would be better not to know.

00:16David May, a friend of mine, I keep telling him to go in

00:18and he won't go in because he doesn't want to know.

00:20So what did they say to you?

00:22Well, when I got in the scan machine, they asked me to...

00:25They ran me up, actually, and they said,

00:27oh, we've got your results.

00:29So I said, well, why can't you tell me on the phone?

00:31They went, no, I want to do it over a Zoom.

00:32So I panicked then, I rang John, and I went,

00:35why are you not telling me on the phone?

00:36Well, just tell me.

00:37And then, obviously, I got Kerry set up the laptop

00:40because I'm not very good at things like that.

00:42And they said, right, this is the diagnosis, it's very mild,

00:45there's nothing to worry about at this stage.

00:47It could be five to ten years when you're like this.

00:51Five years is quite soon.

00:52Five to ten years that it could develop, you know, to bigger stages.

00:57So it wasn't the news that I wanted.

01:00I was scared, Ed, I was scared, of course I was.

01:02Are you experiencing anything at the moment in terms of memory loss?

01:05No, I do forget a lot of things, of course,

01:08but Kerry runs everything for me.

01:09I've got to say, at a certain age, everybody does.

01:11Yeah, I'm 56 now, of course.

01:12We forget names and, you know, forget things and this, that and the other.

01:15But, you know, I don't know if I'm overthinking subconsciously,

01:17but Kerry will ask me every day,

01:20do you know what you're doing this week, you know, blah, blah, blah.

01:22And Kerry, before the scan and since the scan,

01:26so that was about a year and a bit ago, wasn't it?

01:28Had you thought, oh, it'd be fine, he'll go in, it'll be nothing,

01:31it's just, you know, he's just helping his mate out, you know,

01:34for a bit of research?

01:35Or were you actually thinking, hmm, I've never...

01:38Because it's often a partner who might notice behavioural change.

01:42I never noticed anything prior to the scan.

01:46And we didn't really think too much about it, did we?

01:50And then when you went and you got the results,

01:52we still never...

01:54We kind of buried our head in the sand, I think, a bit, didn't we?

01:57We had a laugh and joke about it.

01:58I said, well, it was a bad day, but it was a good day

02:00because they found a brain.

02:02They found your brain?

02:03They found my brain.

02:03I was absolutely delighted and all my mates were like,

02:05God, they didn't even know you had a brain.

02:07But we never really discussed it between each other.

02:09We don't really speak about it to each other.

02:13I speak to my friends and Dean obviously speaks to his,

02:17but we've never...

02:18I've never actually sat down and said to him,

02:19how do you feel about it?

02:23Don't ask him now.

02:25No, because when she does ask me, I just say, yeah, I'm fine.

02:27I'm all right.

02:28And the reason why, obviously, that I didn't come out

02:31and speak about it a year and a half ago, nearly over that now,

02:33is because obviously my eldest son's a professional footballer

02:36and my youngest son was a professional footballer

02:39but who plays amateur football now.

02:41I didn't want my mum to worry.

02:42I didn't want my kids to worry.

02:43I didn't want her family to worry.

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