Episode 65. CJD with Barbara Ludwig - Author of No Time to Cry

I am joined in this podcast by Barbara Ludwig to discuss her experience of CJD, the disease that her husband Jürgen died from, and which she narrated in her excellent memoir No Time To Cry. She explained how and why she was able to assume and convey her husband’s perspective of his illness experience, and how she used the title of the book to convey the importance of time in context of illness.

Barbara explored Jürgen’s early symptoms with walking difficulty and anxiety, and how this progressed to disorientation and paranoid jealousy. She also captured the uncertainty that trailed his early diagnostic process as all investigations initially failed to confirm a diagnosis, and the uncertainty of how long he had to live. She discussed how he was initially thought to have multiple sclerosis and then a psychological disorder, and how the diagnosis of sporadic CJD was eventually confirmed by spinal fluid analysis, and later by post-mortem examination.

Barbara also explored the burdensome care that Jürgen required, initially provided by her, but eventually by a nursing home where his terminal illness played out. We also discussed how she has coped since the death of Jurgen.

Barbara Ludwig grew up in the western part of Berlin. She met Jürgen during her training in local government. They went to Australia after their wedding, and then to Lake Constance in the south of Germany near the border to the Swiss. She worked at the university there whilst Jürgen studied. They then moved to Munich where she worked for many years at the Goethe Institute as head of human resources. Today she writes Mallorca crime novels with passion, and she has been living for five years with her new partner in Bad Orb in the Spessart, near Frankfurt. Her latest book is 'Do You Love the Sea?'