Dame Barbara Windsor's husband Scott Mitchell has revealed that the national treasure will soon have to move into a care home.
The 82-year-old was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2014 and her condition has steadily worsened, with her husband of 20 years Mitchell, 57, now serving as her primary carer.
Speaking to Windsor's former EastEnders co-star Ross Kemp for his ITV show, Mitchell said that her specialist recently informed him that the time is approaching for her to move into a care home.
"It's the thing I've always feared," he said. "He's basically telling me I need to prepare myself that at some point it may not be sustainable to give her the kind of care she needs at the house. I've had some fairly dark moments since he said that because there's a part of me that knows that most likely is the truth and that's what needs to happen.
"There's another part of me which can't imagine letting her go. I can't imagine leaving that lady when she talks to me the way she does and putting her somewhere and her thinking, 'Why has he done this to me?'"
Mitchell continued: "Let's not kid ourselves, and I'd be doing everyone a disservice if I didn't talk about the realities of where this can end up, which can be people being totally bedridden, forgetting how to speak, forgetting how to swallow. It will take away everything. This will strip you of everything that you know as functioning normally."
Around one in six people over the age of 80 develops dementia, while there are around 850,000 people in the UK living with the condition.
Neil Wilkes
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