Fiona Phillips’ husband Martin Frizell shared a heartbreaking update on her Alzheimer’s battle during Monday’s instalment of the Loose Women.
Martin, 66, spoke to Jane Moore, 63, Kelly Brook, 45, Janet Street-Porter, 78, and Brenda Edwards, 56, about how his wife is doing after being diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease, aged 61, in 2022.
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive, degenerative disease of the brain, in which build-up of abnormal proteins causes nerve cells to die.
Jane asked him: ‘How is Jane right now?’
Martin said: ‘Well the good news is, there is some improvement in terms of her mood, not so much in terms of Alzheimer’s, but in term of just being able to get better sleep.
‘Also having a better appetite, I think less confusion. That’s sort of an antidepressant she’s been given.
‘This one works, as you know, you have to go through quite a few before you get one that actually hits the spot.
‘So this is really helping. If anything, she’s actually in a much better place than she was a few weeks ago.’
There is one thing in particular that Fiona is struggling with the most.
Martin explained: ‘Fiona’s main problem with her Alzheimer’s right now is her frustration.
‘She’s someone who has worked from the age of 11, at a paper round. Didn’t stop working till a couple of years ago wen the Alzheimer’s made it difficult to do so.
‘She’ll watch telly and she’ll get frustrated that she’s not working. She’ll get anxious or frightened thinking about it.
‘This was a fearless women. She spent decades doing this. Seeing her now in that anxious phase is horrible.
‘The whole of Alzheimer’s is horrible, as such.’
It comes after a smiling Fiona thanked fans for their love and support in a lovely new video her husband Martin Frizell shared on Instagram late last month.
In the clip, Fiona praised fans for their support on her new memoir, Remember When: My Life With Alzheimer’s, as she enjoyed an ice cream while on a walk in London.
She said: ‘Hello, thank you for reading my new book!
‘Really good of you, hope you like it. Okay, bye.’
Martin captioned the post: ‘Out for a walk and an Almond Magnum on a hot London afternoon and some words of gratitude for all the kind folk thinking of delving into her book.’
In her candid new memoir, which published on last month, Martin shared how the couple struggled in the years leading up to her diagnosis.
Speaking about the difficult period that began around 2015, Martin recalled: ‘Nothing I could say seemed to help.
He continued: ‘And I guess like in any relationship, the whole thing spirals. Because I felt she was being moody and critical of everything I said and did, I shut down too.
‘We were barely talking and while we were still in the same house we were living quite separate lives.
‘If we were both at home in the evenings, there would be long silences. After years of being able to chat about anything and everything, we’d run out of things to talk about.
‘The long silences can’t have been enjoyable for her either, but that was where we had got to.’
Fiona and Martin have been married since 2006. They share two sons Mackenzie, 21, and Nathaniel, 24.
Loose Women airs weekdays from 12:30pm on ITV1 and is available to stream on ITVX.
