Alzheimer's Disease
On 3 November 2003, the ABC aired an episode of Australian Story in which Hawke publicly revealed that she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Her family had noticed significant short-term memory loss, leading to the diagnosis in 2001. She had been reluctant to go public about the illness she called the 'Big A', but eventually did so to publicise a fund for supporting Alzheimer's sufferers that she had jointly set up with Alzheimer's Australia.
In 2004, Hazel Flynn and Hawke's daughter Susan Pieters-Hawke published a book, Hazel's Journey: A personal experience of Alzheimer's, describing the previous decade of Hawke's life and the onset of Alzheimer's. At the book launch on 1 November 2004, Pieters-Hawke revealed that her mother had reached the mid-stages of the disease and was now suffering from quite severe short-term memory loss. That year the Hazel Hawke Dementia and Care Fund was established. Hawke's granddaughter Sophie Pieters-Hawke launched an education kit for schoolchildren about Alzheimers in 2007.
In August 2009, she was placed in high level care.
Read more about this topic: Hazel Hawke
Famous quotes containing the word disease:
“I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad.
I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell:
We’ll no more meet, no more see one another.
But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter—
Or rather a disease that’s in my flesh,
Which I must needs call mine.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)