Jeanette Bottrill and husband Francis. Photo / John Cowpland, Alphapix
Jeanette Bottrill was 36 when it was confirmed that she had Huntington's disease. She was told on her birthday, a month after the death of her mother.
It turned out that it had been in her family for generations: "My mother had it, her mother had it, I have it,
my sister has it."
Bottrill says it's not unusual for it to go undetected for a long time. "It's almost like a skeleton in people's closets. People just thought [Huntington's sufferers] were drunk, or mentally ill."
Some people in her support group have parents who were given electric-shock therapy. Her father was told that his mother-in-law was insane.
Fifteen years on from Bottrill's diagnosis, she is well practised at describing the disease in layman's terms. "If your orange doesn't get enough juice, it dries up. Huntington's patients are all very different but we have a neurological illness that shuts down different parts of the body from the brain."
