This is how Nina Gunke lives with Alzheimer’s disease today

In 2020, the actor Nina Gunke received the news that she had Alzheimer’s disease. A year later, she chose to go public with it. It wasn’t an obvious decision, but she says she’s never regretted it.

– No, I’m very grateful for that, I have to say. For my own sake and for others too I think. I get so many people thanking me, says Nina Gunke.

Need help getting dressed

Three years after she was diagnosed, she still lives at home in the apartment with her husband Samuel Holgersson, something she is grateful for. Nina needs help with a lot, including showering and getting ready. She says that it is difficult to get dressed and, for example, fasten buttons, and that it is frustrating.

– I get angry and sad that it is like that. It’s hard that I can’t handle it. But what I have to do, I do. So just try to toughen up and not get angry or sad just because of it.

It is also difficult to remember how, for example, the coffee machine works, she says. She knows what it does, but doesn’t remember how and where to press.

New routines

Daughter Moa Schmidt Gunke, who often helps her mother, says that their everyday life looks much the same as before.

– Apart from the fact that you need to adapt quite a lot more. You need to plan things in a different way and things take a little more time, she says.

– You create routines, new routines that you work according to. But you have to live with that, that’s life somewhere. It’s not hard or difficult that way, it’s just new routines, says husband Samuel Holgersson.

Nina Gunke wants to emphasize that her husband is very positive.

– You have to be somewhere. I think it is important, he says.

Don’t care what others think

In the beginning, when she was diagnosed, she wanted to hide the disease from others. But after she told about it, she is no longer concerned about what others will think and think, she says.

– I have completely let go of that now and I am so happy about that. When it gets crazy, it gets crazy and so be it

“I feel like I’m getting worse”

Nina Gunke is now an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Foundation and has become something of a face for the disease. While she is happy that research is progressing, there is also sadness that there is no cure that can help her.

– I think it’s tough, because I know it’s getting worse and I feel it. So I don’t think I will get it in the best way. But I work as much as I can so that it will be better anyway.