'HARDEST DECISION'
EMMERDALE actress Charley Webb choked up on This Morning today as she made a heartbreaking admission over her mum's dementia battle.
The former soap star, who played Debbie Dingle between 2002 and 2021, opened up about her mum Helen's deteriorating health.
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Alzheimer’s Research UK ambassador Charley, 35, became emotional as she spoke to presenters Alison Hammond and Demot O'Leary in the wake of Coronation Street legend Julie Goodyear's diagnosis.
She told the hosts her mum Helen was diagnosed eight years ago and their family had been through "hell" since.
Charley recalled: "There was no support, no help, it was shocking actually, and for me and my siblings it has been eight years of hell.
"She’s now gone into a home and it was the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make."
Charley said her mother was hugely involved in her career and so she noticed when Helen's memory became progressively worse.
The actress explained: "I got into working so young. Mum took over things like that and my sister’s make-up academy, and she was just forgetting things.
“She forgot something huge for me financiall, and I thought ‘this is quite serious’ then she was confused about something with her house, and I thught ‘this doesn’t make sense.’
“And people were like ‘you’re just being dramatic’ because I can be dramatic but I just knew.”
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Charley, who shares three kids with her Emmerdale actor husband Matthew Wolfenden, went on: “I was pregnant with my middle one Bowie. That was traumatic, trying to get the diagnosis is actually a long process.
"It’s difficult, it’s hard, it was stressful. She had a big personality, she was much wilder than me. She would stay up until 4 in the morning with my friends, so seeing that decline was awful.
“I think she was in denial. She was young, she was 64, she never wanted to go to the doctors for anything. They looked for everything else, they checked her thyroid, did tests because I don’t think they thought it was that.”
Charley said her mum's appearance had dramatically changed due to her early onset dementia - which is when a person experiences symptoms before the age of 65.
"My mum is so fit and healthy. Very glamorous, hair was always perfect, make-up perfect. You lose them right before your eyes," she explained.
"That’s the hardest thing, because you grieve for the person they were.
“She’s like a little girl now and it’s taken me a long time to be able to talk about it, it’s such a personal and big thing but it feels like now is the right time.
“One out of two of us will get dementia or care for someone with dementia, if we can do something about it now we should.”
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Soap legend Julie, 81, played Corrie barmaid Bet Lynch for 25 years.
Her husband shared her health diagnosis last week and said his beloved wife had become forgetful.
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