Four years ago, the news came that turned everything upside down. Former S-top Lena Rådström-Baastad’s love of life and husband Roger had suffered from Alzheimer’s.
Now Rådström Baastad, now governor of Örebro, talks about what life looks like today.
– Getting life together as a professional worker and being a family member is the most difficult thing I have ever done in my entire life.
Lena Rådström-Baastad is known to many as the party secretary of the Social Democrats. But in 2021 she resigned from her political mission. The reason was that her husband received a sick note that changed everything.
In 2018, signs that all was not right began to appear. Roger was exhausted, stressed and called in sick. At the beginning of 2020, he did a memorial investigation. When the news came, the couple was ready to leave for Lapland.
– We left there with a fatal diagnosis in our luggage, a stack of brochures and a thousand thoughts spinning.
Took a year off
They got a week together in Lapland. In the car home, they began formulating a message to send to acquaintances and scheduled days to break the news to their children and close relatives.
Then followed a year when they were both free to be with each other. Lena Rådström-Baastad quit her job as party secretary and started working as governor in Örebro.
Double the feelings: Is very angry
Now a few years have passed, and it has not been easy. Lena Rådström-Baastad describes the dual feelings of going from being a wife to also being a carer.
– While I am very keen that we do things so that we create the nice moments when we do it, sadness also comes. How about the last time we do this?
– But there are also many days where you are so tired of this. I am very angry with him. You feel like the worst person in the world. How can I stand and scold a person who is sick?
In addition, juggling everyday life with the job as governor is also difficult.
– Getting life together as a professional worker and being a family member is the most difficult thing I have ever done in my entire life.
Feel alone
Lena Rådström-Baastad talks about another struggle as a relative – feeling very alone.
– I would have liked a care plan where it was said that “now we have this follow-up, these are the contacts, the entrances you can have to the care”, something to stick to so that I was not left on my own. I was just thrown into it with no compass to navigate.