Two brothers who lost their mother to dementia are set to run the London Marathon to raise funds and awareness, after discovering they will also develop the same illness.
Brothers' Mission
Jordan and Cian Adams' mother Geraldine was diagnosed with familial frontotemporal dementia (FTD) at age 47 and died at 52 in 2016. Genetic testing revealed that Jordan and Cian carry the gene, while their sister Kennedy does not.
Appearing on BBC Breakfast, Jordan, who was 15 when his mother was diagnosed, said: "I am a carrier. I have a 99.9% chance of getting familial FTD. It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when."
He added: "I just want do as much as I can in the time that I have to help those living with dementia, those impacted by it, so that I leave this world, hopefully in a better place when dementia does take my life."
Marathon Challenge
The brothers will take on the London Marathon, with Jordan running with a fridge strapped to his back, before tackling another 32 marathons in Ireland to honour their mother's Irish roots.
"We set a monetary goal to try and raise a million pounds before we die of dementia," Jordan said.
Discussing his mother, he said: "Incredibly difficult thing to have to watch her be stripped of everything that made her who she was and then eventually lose her life after six years of living with FTD was completely heartbreaking."
"I've got the best part of 10 to 15 years to bring hope to millions of families who were devastated by it," he said. "I want to show people that you have no control over the cards that you get dealt in life, but you have a choice of how you play your hand."
Family Support
BBC Breakfast host Naga Munchetty asked Jordan whether he thought his mother knew the determination he and his brother possess. He replied that their upbringing was filled with love, but the grit came from enduring devastating life events.
"Being told that mum was ultimately terminally ill at the age of 15, myself, and Cian was nine. You go through a hell of a lot, and it's taken a whole family support network and a real test of character to still be here and still live some sort of quality of life," he said.
"Mine and Cian's future is now clear in the sense that every day we get further from our beautiful mum leaving this world, we get a day closer to getting it ourselves. And that's an incredibly difficult weight and burden to carry."
He concluded: "We're on a mission because we have a clock ticking against us, and we want to make as much of a difference in the next 10, 15 years that we have."
BBC Breakfast airs on BBC One from 6am.
