Dr Chris Brown opens up about his mother’s Alzheimer’s

In a special Mother’s Day piece written for Stellar, Dr Chris Brown has touched on the pain of not being able to see his sick mum in her hospice during lockdown.

Channel 10’s Dr Chris Brown has reflected on his childhood in a sweet salute to his mother, opening up on the heartbreak of watching her health deteriorate from afar.

Penning a Mother’s Day piece for this weekend’s issue of Stellar, Dr Brown shared his mother’s love of board games – particularly Scrabble – and a cheeky anecdote from his upbringing.

But his touching piece also spoke of the devastation of watching his mother suffer through Alzheimer’s disease, and not being able to visit her this Mother’s Day in lockdown.

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“Mum hails from a family of board game warriors. In fact, you don’t start a game of Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit without taking a week of annual leave and stocking up on snacks. It’s fair to say my family has spent generations prepping for pandemic life,” the I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! host joked.

“But today, mum’s in a different battle. Her sassy spirit and busy mind have taken heavy losses to Alzheimer’s disease. The slow creep of a condition often called ‘the long goodbye’ means the matriarch of the family has fallen silent,” he wrote.

Dr Brown, who hails from Newcastle and is one of three boys, went on to say that given the current lockdown restrictions, a Mother’s Day visit to her hospice was out of the question.

“It’s impossibly hard to be so physically distant from someone for whom touch is one of a few remaining communication tools,” he wrote.

But the 41-year-old went on to share a welcome piece of Mother’s Day wisdom: “The recent social distance makes it more important to articulate gratitude to mums across the nation.

“Or ‘indebtedness’. At 12 letters, it scores higher on a Scrabble board. Mum would approve of that,” he added.

Dr Brown spoke to Stellar magazine in February last year about his mother's battle with Alzheimer's.

He revealed that not seeing his mum for months at a time had made her changes more noticeable to him than ever.

“It’s a very hard thing to watch someone who means so much to you fade away before your eyes," he said.

“I’ve heard it referred to as the long goodbye, and it certainly is.

“Because she's still here, but the mum I know isn't anymore.

Read the full piece written by Dr Chris Brown in the latest issue of Stellar, available in today’s Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Herald Sun.