Blog: The Brain Dialogues, filtered by tag: Donor

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au In August 1932, a baby girl given the name Annette Barbara Murphy was born in Temora, New South Wales.  At age 90, following a 10-year battle with dementia, Annette passed away peacefully at Killara Gardens Aged Care.  Annette was a Piano Teacher, a lover of the arts and was blessed with a happy, fulfilling life and an adoring life partner who was with her for 57 years.  She was admired by her four children Jennifer, Peter, Debra and Justine, and a much-loved Ma-Ma to her eight grandchildren, Elliot, Lilly, Georgina, Anna, George, Julia, Aveline and… Read More

For CHeBA donor Francesca Wood it was a mixture of sadness and relief when her mother, Mrs Helen Reading, was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2017.  Helen and granddaughter Izzy According to Francesca, it took a long time for her Mum to be diagnosed.   “There was a lot of denial that anything was wrong despite most of us around her acknowledging that all the signs were pointing to dementia.” Francesca, who lives in Melbourne, said that the years between her diagnosis and her passing were extremely challenging. “It was a slow mourning period watching my beautiful mum disappear. “I… Read More

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au CHeBA’s Sydney Memory and Ageing Study is one of the largest continuously running studies of cognitive ageing in Australia with the aims of investigating rates and predictors of healthy cognitive ageing, mild cognitive impairment and dementia in older Australians. An extraordinary 1,037 older adults have generously committed their time to this research for 15 years. One of these incredible people was Mrs Lilian Keldoulis.  Lilian was born in Sydney in 1931, the second daughter to Greek immigrant parents Betty and Mick Adams. Shortly after she was born… Read More

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au Dr Karolina Krysinska obtained her PhD in Psychology in 2001 and has since had a rich career history in research. She is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at The University of Melbourne and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity at the University of New South Wales. Previously she worked on the Australian Dementia Network (ADNeT) Registry project at the Monash University. Karolina is also a Gestalt psychotherapist at the ConnectGround Clinic and Lygon… Read More

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au In 1945 when Australians were celebrating the end of the Second World War, a baby girl was born west of Sydney, in Granville. Her parents named her Jean.   65 years later and with three loving sons, seven grandchildren and more than 50 years of a strong and happy marriage to husband Len Nesbitt, Jean was diagnosed with vascular dementia – the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease.  On Friday, 11 September, just over 10 years since she was first diagnosed, Jean’s family said their loving goodbyes at a beautiful memorial held… Read More