Alix Popham: Ex-Wales flanker on early onset dementia diagnosis

"I don't want to be a burden on anybody. That's the thing that plays on my mind."

At just 40 years old, Alix Popham was diagnosed with early onset dementia. A former Wales flanker, he is a husband and father of three girls, trying to navigate an illness that affects his personality.

"I felt like there was a rage inside me boiling up and I just needed to get it out," Popham told BBC Sport.

"I slammed the doors and broke them. The bannister in the house, I pulled that off. After that aggression has come out, I'm thinking to myself, why did I do that? I have no control over those actions at that time."

Popham would forget people's names, or lose track of a conversation. His wife, Mel, re him setting the kitchen on fire. "He put the grill on and closed it. Darcy [their 2-year-old] was in her high chair. I could smell burning," she says. "It was pretty frightening."

But it was something as normal as a bike ride, following a loop Popham had taken hundreds of times, that was the turning point.

"I got lost on the bike ride and had a blackout moment," Popham, now 41, says.

"He said he'd got lost, but he just got to a point where he didn't know which way to go," Mel explains. "He had to retrace his route on an app. He came home and sort of broke down to me."

Popham went to his GP and underwent tests. They showed his short term memory was, in his words, "really bad". In the winter of 2019, Popham was approached by a neurologist who specialises in head injuries. By then, things were getting worse.

"If it is two people talking, there are no problems," he says. "But if there are lots of people talking or background noises, I couldn't take in the information. I'd come out of meetings thinking what was that all about">