Dr Debra Graves on her husband’s dementia diagnosis: ‘It probably didn’t help that I was in active denial’
Dr Debra Graves and her husband Don were both devastated when he was diagnosed with dementia — but Don’s devastation was short-lived.
“There was a short time between when Don knew something was happening to him to when he didn’t know what was going on,” says Dr Graves, the former CEO of the Royal College of Pathologists Australasia.
“It was about six months.”
In To Dementia With Love, a book co-written with journalist Jane Carstens, Dr Graves describes her initial denial about Don’s dementia diagnosis and what happened next.