Looking After Lindilops is the story of caring for my wife Lynn through early‑onset dementia — a journey told with honesty, practicality, and love. I wrote it for the unexpected family carer, and for anyone walking alongside a loved one. Here you’ll find sample pages, background, and links to the paperback and eBook on amazon.co.uk (search “Looking After Lindilops”).
The first two extracts come from Chapter 2, The Long Unravelling, where we step back to the years before Lynn’s formal diagnosis. These passages show moments and symptoms we did not fully recognise at the time. Some we attributed to early menopause or vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Our GP Practice had to identify “early‑onset dementia” by eliminating other possibilities.
Moments that made sense only later
Our youngest went to Durham for his “junior master’s degree”, and we took turns driving him there and back. One day in 2013, Lynn phoned me in a panic. She was lost, convinced she’d taken the wrong motorway exit, and that the signage — and therefore the entire situation — was my fault. Nearly thirty years into a loving marriage, I knew her sharp words were stress, not malice. My job was simply to get her home safely. I laughed it off at the time. It was so much more.
Around then, we’d watched a TV programme about healthy eating, and it suggested steaming vegetables instead of boiling them. I bought a steamer on the next weekly shop. That steamer became a recurring story in memory clinics for the next decade. Lynn was indignant that I had bought it “without even talking to her”, and she told every medical professional so. I found it amusing then. I didn’t yet see its significance.
Stress, shock, and the cracks appearing
In February 2014, our second son was in a terrible car collision. We received “that phone call” — the one every parent dreads: “Are you the Parents of …”, it started. He was alive, badly injured, being cut out of the wreckage and would then be taken to Nottingham General Hospital.
Lynn froze. She had no experience of such news. I, having been a commercial diver in my younger years, had been trained to deal with sudden trauma. I insisted we go immediately. It was the right thing to do. (He’s okay now.) At the time, I saw only her shock. I didn’t yet see the pattern.
The following year, during February half‑term, she asked me to help reorganise eighty boxes of archived school records. It should have been a simple, satisfying job. Instead, her thinking was muddled, and her first line of defence was attack — shouting at me as though I were the problem. We got it done, eventually. That was when I began to pay closer attention, and to do my own online research.
These three excerpts come from Chapter 10 – Crossing into Palliative, during the period between late‑mid‑stage dementia and the beginning of end‑of‑life care. It was a time when Lynn’s needs accelerated quickly, new professionals entered our lives, and the emotional weight of caring grew heavier by the day.
The scenes are not consecutive, but together they show the reality of that period: the confusion, the rapid changes, the moments of heartbreak, and the love that continued between us even when everything else was falling away. I hope they give you a sense of the book’s voice, honesty, and emotional truth.
Meeting new professionals
During the second half of 2024, we began meeting a range of new medical professionals — some with job titles that were easy to understand, and others that left me guessing. A “Speech and Language Therapist,” for example: I assumed she would help with Lynn’s speech, not realising that swallowing difficulties were the real reason she would become essential.
As contact with the District Nursing Team and new roles at our GP surgery increased, we made some good choices and some less good ones — a perfect example of how Family Carer training could have helped.
The Wyre Forest district nursing team
I cannot remember the exact sequence of events. Visits from the Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) brought me confidence, even though I didn’t initially understand the roles of the many professionals we would soon meet. She felt like a conductor of services rather than yet another person pointing us elsewhere — the kind we had met too often, who drained energy rather than offering support.
We met physiotherapists, occupational therapists, palliative‑care specialists, speech and language therapists, and others. When we met some before they were needed, the ANP and district nurses ensured we met them again when the time was right. Lynn’s needs accelerated exponentially in the last nine months, often leaving me wondering whether I was asking for help too often. It was hard acquiring knowledge on my own.
Twenty punches
Lynn was never sporty, though our sons were. She had never taken boxing lessons or self‑defence classes, so I was astonished one day at her sudden ability to punch me in the head.
After a particularly messy episode of double incontinence, I took her to the bathroom to clean her. She was unusually distressed, confused, and angry that I had taken her from her sleep and was now “hosing her down.” As she wriggled and shouted, I held her under her arms with my left hand while showering her with my right.
Suddenly she looked at my body position, drew back, and launched a right hook. Bang. I turned my head, but it landed hard. Then another. And another.
“Please stop — I’m only trying to clean you so you can go back to bed,” I pleaded. Bang.
She watched my eyes, timed her punches, and landed twenty in total — with the accuracy of someone who knew their way around a bare‑knuckle fight.
How could I be angry? It hurt, but I hurt more for her loss of dignity. Love knows no bounds, and somehow each punch felt as though it eased her embarrassment. Alzheimer’s has its awful benefits — she never remembered the incident. It was one of those moments when love and heartbreak sat in the same room.
And a deeply emotional excerpt from Chapter 11 – The body fails in new ways
A Thousand Years
On 28 February 2025, Lynn and I were sitting together on the sofa when Christina Perri’s A Thousand Years began to play. I had my phone in my hand and, without really thinking, I recorded the moment. Something about it felt fragile, as though it might slip away if I didn’t catch it.
Lynn started to sing along. Her voice was soft, unsteady, but full of feeling. As the chorus came — “I have died every day waiting for you… I have loved you for a thousand years…” — she became visibly emotional. A single tear appeared on her cheek: Lynn didn’t do crying.
It was as if the song reached a place inside her that she could no longer put into words. Watching her, I sensed a kind of recognition. Not spoken, not even fully formed, but real. A recognition that she was dying. That there was no path back. That her ability to love outwardly — me, the children, all of us — was slipping beyond her reach, even though the feeling itself was still there. For those few minutes, music became a bridge between what she could no longer say and what she still felt. I held her hand as she sang, and we were completely connected — grief and love woven together in the same breath.
Finally, here is the start of Chapter 13: Lynn’s last days. Lynn has just been put into her hospital bed at home, overlooking our garden. She will never get out of bed and we will be watching over her for the next 11 days, every second someone will be with her. This excerpt shows how each chapter begins, perhaps as an episode of a box-set series might. It enables readers to pick up Lynn’s story wherever they are; or, if they become overwhelmed at any point, to put it down and come back to it when they feel ready.
Chapter 13: Lynn’s last days
Previously…
Years of noisy children growing into wonderful adults. Years of searching for answers as the disease shifted and tightened its grip. And then the final acceleration — the one that carried us here.
For three months, music had been our refuge, the one thing that could still soothe her. But the recent bouts of terminal agitation had been warning signs. They were the last tremors before this sudden, heavy silence.
What I learned…
If I can care, if it’s safe for Lynn, if I am strong enough, if I can learn as I go, then I should. And if I love my wife, then let it be unconditional, unending — Magpie love.
Looking ahead…
I promised Lynn at the altar, “…in sickness and in health…”. We had decades of health, and nearly four years of sickness. Now I must learn this final phase of caring — the new actions, the new responsibilities, the new kind of presence she needs.
I cannot fall at the tenth hurdle.
Interested in finding out more about the book?
If these excerpts resonate with you, I hope you’ll consider reading the full story when the book becomes available from 1st May 2026. You can learn more about the book here:
[About the Book → Link]