What did it mean? Oh everything, absolutely everything, he enjoyed driving, I don’t. I really don’t. I get in a car and it’s a means of getting from A to B. He actively enjoyed driving. He has driven since he was 18, its independence, its everything, we live as I say four miles from anywhere. And you know if hes gardening and he needs some more potting compost, if hes mowing the lawn and he needs more petrol.

Anything, hes got to come and ask me which is jolly difficult, when you’ve never had to do that in your life. Its all about freedom of movement, freedom of what you do, when you do it and not having to fit in with the fact that if I don’t do it now, I’ll be going in to shop later, I’ll do it then. It, its just that personal freedom, and I think its terribly important for a man to be able to drive. And to have it taken away is devastating.

Especially for someone with visual and spatial problems, I began to get quite anxious when I was in the car with [my husband] because he would do things like signal left and turn right, or Id be map reading and Id say Take the second exit on the roundabout and hed take the fourth or fifth, or something, because he was reading the sign the wrong way round. I used to get very worried when [my husband] was out in the car alone, especially if he was overdue, very worried indeed. [My husband] had fortunately been a very safe driver so, hopefully some things were second nature to him. But certainly when he came in and he said hed driven the wrong way down the M11, that really did for me, he made light of it by saying They were altering the junctionand that was probably the reason, they were altering the junction and there were road works around the place and he completely lost direction. To have driven the wrong way, the wrong way down the motorway itself! The police stopped him and turned him round and sent him back, and one does wonder if some of the erratic driving that one sees isnt due to people in the early stages of dementia.

But he was very good at giving his keys up. The day he got lost in [town] in familiar surroundings and he was away for three hours on what should have been a forty minute – twenty minutes there, change of tyres to the car, twenty minutes back he was away for over three hours. Hed been all over the place and couldnt find his way home and he came back absolutely ashen-faced, in a cold sweat and he threw his keys on the table, he said Dont ever let me drive again. And I breathey’d a huge sigh of relief. But what I would have done had he insisted on driving I really dont know.

Driving was something that was a great worry to me, it was one of these great ethical dilemmas I found myself in, because his whole life, over the, a year ago his whole life was driving. Hed get up in the morning, hed be out at 7 o’clock, hed be back again, hed be out again, hed be back again, out again, in and out. In the middle of the night hed get up, get dressed and go out. And I wouldn’t know where hed been.

I used to hide his keys when he was driving – eventually – so that he, he would wander round the house looking for his keys but not able to articulate what he was looking for, so he would say ‘Where are?’ and then stop and look puzzled and go wandering off again. So, that was a problem solved – partly but then he had a little bump just before Christmas last year, where he went into the back of another woman at a roundabout very slightly, but he drove off. But before he drove off a Tesco lorry went into the back of his car. And I came home and found his car on the drive with the back smashed in and of course he couldn’t tell me what had happened.

Fortunately he wasn’t injured and I thought ‘Well if the police were involved well soon know about it. Well they weren’t until a week or so later when I came home and he said ‘The cops have been. I said ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t know. So I managed to find out who it was by dint of phoning the police stations around, not just one station but about three or four stations and spoke to the policeman who’d been and he came round to see me and he sat there and [my partner] sat on the settee over there, and the policeman said ‘I feel most peculiar talking to you, and not talking to him. He said ‘When I came to interview him, about the accident, I thought he was taking the Mickey and I bring, brought my colleague in from the police car and said, Will you listen to this gentleman and see whether you agree that hes not fit to be interviewed

And they did, they both agreed. And what had happened was um, they’d gone to the DVLA and got his, address obviously and, this is why they came to interview him. So he said at the end of the interview ‘Look, I will have to inform the DVLA about this. So I said ‘Well I was going to do it after Christmas.

I, well, it was one of the most difficult decisions I had to make, this business about driving the car because I knew he shouldn’t be driving, because although his spatial awareness faculties are not, haven’t been, damaged at all, its his decision-making abilities that have gone and he would, it would be dangerous, basically.

So really the whole situation took it out of my hands and I was heartily glad when the DVLA, well I, he stopped driving from the accident because his car was a write-off, fortunately, and he never asked to drive after that. So that was that. The DVLA finally sent a letter saying you know ‘Weve, weve been in touch with your doctors and your psychiatrists and sorry, but your driving license, needs to go. So it went. It’s never been a problem except it has made him completely reliable on, reliant on me now and that’s one of my biggest problems.

Since he stopped driving it hasn’t been a problem at all, he hasn’t wanted to drive, hes never got in the car on the driver’s side, made a fuss about it, asked me if he could drive, its as if its gone completely from his memory.

Well that threw up the first problem, which was, if it may not be that then why, having been told by two different doctors that I shouldnt drive, my husbands concern was Why should I not be allowed to drive?

He put this to the consultant and this was the first real problem that was thrown up. The consultant said Would you mind leaving the room while I discuss this with your wife? which my husband did. The consultant discussed it with me, called my husband back into the room and said Well, as a result of talking to your wife, I must now recommend that you dont drive, this having been the third doctor to recommend that.

Now that threw the onus wholly on to me and my husband perceived me as the, the wicked wife who had persuaded everybody that he was unfit to drive, and that I think did more harm to our marriage than anything has ever done before or since. And I dont think that man had any possible concept of what he was doing to us as a married couple, by not accepting the responsibility of having to make a decision as a professional and stick by it. That the whole onus was thrown on to me and it was devastating. It harmed us for months and months and months. So that really could have been avoided.

Now an example of this was the driving. My husband and I were at each others throats. We were destroying each other with this awful driving issue. Now my husband said to this new consultant that we were under, I do not think that I am unfit to drive. So this consultant made it very, very clear that in his opinion my husband wasnt fit to drive. And my husband said Well I dont accept that. So he, I maintain in an extremely courteous and compassionate fashion, accepted my husbands right to say that and he said I fully understand your feelings, I can, imagine how I would feel in your position. This must be addressed properly, I stand wholly by my medical decision and I would stick by that in a court of law. However, I hear what youre saying, you have a perfect right to be heard. And he said I feel the way forward now, this is obviously causing enormous distress not only to you but to your wife as well, we must arrange for you to be tested properly by an independent assessor.

And he gave us the particulars and the wherewithal about how to apply for an assessment at [the] Assessment Centre, where you go for the entire day, you arrive at half past eight I think it was and youre tested through till nine, they, sorry, through till half past four. They test stroke patients, head injuries, people who may be have been injured but could recover enough, it is a really objective, thoroughly proper assessment and they do it a number of different ways.

And at the end of the day my husband had failed consistently from the beginning of the day to the end. On one of the tests it was on a computer simulator and they could produce computer feed out paper, and as a scientist that meant something to him. Hed got evidence, which is what he wanted, and he was entirely satisfied. As a matter of fact he was inappropriately satisfied but that is a definite feature of Picks disease. He almost patted them on the back and told them theyd done a jolly good job! But that is typical of the disease. But we as a couple were released from the agony of the fact that it was my fault. Now any doctor could have suggested that as a way forward. That would have saved us, oh a year, if not more, of agony.

I, was appalled when [my husband] was sent out of the room, the way it was indicated quite clearly that according to what I said, a decision would be made and that was precisely what did happen. But I, you see I could have

Yes it’s a, it’s difficult I think your automatic inclination is always to take into account the individual good of your relative first and foremost so it can be difficult to see when theres a wider issue involved. But I didn’t have a huge amount of difficulty making the decision not to let mum drive because I, in fact what, what probably I should be saying is that I was remiss in not realising there was a problem sooner and therefore she had been driving a bit in the previous year when she was clearly not well and that was dangerous. So I don’t think I did that too soon.

I’m not sure if there are equivalent. I think if somebody was still at work and was in a position to put other people at risk that would be an issue. I think at the stage my mother got to it wouldn’t have been an option, she wouldn’t have been able to work. I would in general err on the side of the public good at that stage I think.