“I’ve got to get on with it. How long is a piece of string? You’ve got to enjoy your life.” …
Today on Good Morning Britain, former Premier League footballer, Dean Windass joined hosts Ed Balls and Ranvir Singh alongside his fiancée Kerry Kehoe, to discuss his stage 2 dementia diagnosis as he says “it would be better not to know”.
Dean said: “John [Stiles] asked me about a year and half ago [to get a scan] and I declined. I said ‘No, I’m not interested really to find out’, and he was expressing about the football families and how a lot of ex footballers have passed away [from dementia]. He said, ‘Look it might help a lot of people’, so I was sort of a guinea pig to go into this scan machine.
“There’s a lot of footballers that won’t do it because they don’t want to know the outcome. I wish I wouldn’t have gone in now, but it’s happened.”
Ed Balls asked: “You wish you hadn’t done the scan?” with Dean replying: “Yeah, because then I wouldn’t have known would I? It would be better not to know.”
Discussing his diagnosis, Dean said: “They said this is the diagnosis, it’s very mild. You have nothing to worry about at this stage. It could be five to ten years that it could develop to bigger stages, so it wasn’t the news that I wanted. I was scared Ed, I was scared, of course I was.”
Asked if he is experiencing any symptoms now, Dean revealed: “I do forget a lot of things of course, but Kerry runs everything for me. I’m 56 now, so of course I forget names and forget things, but I don’t know if I’m over thinking subconsciously. Kerry will ask me everyday ‘Do you know what you’re doing this week?'”
Kerry added: “I never noticed anything prior to the scan, and we didn’t really think too much about it. When he went and got the results…we kind of buried our heads in the sand I think a bit, didn’t we? We don’t really speak about it to each other. I speak to my friends and Dean obviously speaks to his, but I’ve never actually sat down and said to him ‘how do you feel about it?'”
Sharing his concerns for his children, Dean added: “The reason obviously that I didn’t come out and speak about it a year and a half ago was that my eldest son is a professional footballer and my youngest son was a professional footballer but plays amateur football now. I didn’t want my mum to worry, I didn’t want my kids to worry, I didn’t want her [Kerry’s] family to worry…
“It’s not just football matches, it’s training everyday, the repetition of heading balls everyday – I did it for 20 years. I don’t know if Josh [Dean’s son] does head it everyday. He’s not a massive header of the ball anyway really but I said to him ‘try not to head the ball’ but you have to in a game, of course you have. He scored a goal at Wembley by heading the ball. You’ve got to head it, but can you minimise it in training?”
Dean went on to describe his son’s goal at Wembley as the “best football moment of his career” as he described it as feeling “more important” than his own Wembley goal ever did.
On making the most of life, Dean said: “I go to see my mates in the pub and we can have a laugh and joke about it now. First time it ever came out, I know that everyone was worried… I walked into the pub and said ‘I forgot my wallet’ which was a great thing. I was trying to have a bit of banter about it, but at the start, I didn’t want Kerry to worry, I was a bit worried, but I’ve got to deal with it. I’ve got to get on with it. How long is a piece of string? You’ve got to enjoy your life.”
Good Morning Britain weekdays from 6am on ITV1, ITVX, STV & STV Player
