This is June.

She’s my mother-in-law and she has Alzheimer’s.

She still recognises most of her family at the moment but can’t write their names. She’s lost the ability to read, so birthday, Christmas and Mother’s day cards are bright pictures of dogs and cats. She has an old lady near her who she helps; we worked out that this was her and she doesn’t always recognise herself in the mirror.

She used to be a manager of a bookmaker but can no longer count or recognise numbers. She has lost the ability to tell the time. This means she gets up when the sun comes up, and goes to bed when the sun goes down.

She has a tendency to leave food in the wrong places; cheese in the breadbin, bread in the fridge. She doesn’t like getting post and if she gets something she’s not expecting she’ll put it in the bin. We once found a delivery for a neighbour hidden in the cupboard under the stairs.

She spends a lot of time at home where amazing things happen outside her front door; fights, police chases, arguments, thefts, and burglaries. We worked out these were things that happened on TV programmes but she believed were real and outside her home.

For the last two years, I’ve been fundraising for Alzheimer’s Research UK with their Running Down Dementia initiative. This year I’ve set myself a target of raising £200 and running 300km (186 miles) from the 1st April to 31st August. I’ll do the miles; you just need to chuck a few quid in the pot.

ARUK can’t do anything to arrest June’s condition but any contribution you make might help someone else in the future. Any donation would be appreciated; I’d be happy with the cost of a coffee – £3. If you can’t make a donation, then please share this page, RT on Twitter, link to it on your blogs.

Thank you in advance for anything you can do to help.