'I'm slowly losing him': Wolverhampton couple's story lays bare cruel impact of Alzheimer's disease
"I'm slowly losing him, but more importantly he is losing his sense of self."
Those are the heartbreaking words of a Wolverhampton woman who is gradually losing her husband of almost four decades to a cruel degenerative disease.
Frank Littleford, who is Wolverhampton born and bred, is among the hundreds of thousands of people living with dementia in the UK.
The 78-year-old, from Penn, worked as a probation officer for 40 years before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in January 2020.
Sharing his story is Frank's wife of 38 years, Alison, who encouraged him to visit the GP five years ago when he was initially diagnosed with depression.
She said: "Frank was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2015 and successfully treated for that, and it was shortly after that I began to notice slight changes.
"Things that I would have expected him to be able to do or remember, he was beginning to struggle with. Not only forgetting names, but forgetting perhaps how to operate things like garden equipment and occasionally not recognising where we were in very familiar surroundings.
