‘I have vascular dementia but I’m determined to keep selling holidays’

She’s made “lifestyle changes”; stopping drinking, losing weight, eating more healthily and regularly playing “brain training games”, in a bid to slow the disease’s progression. And she’s changed the way she works.  “Before, I could work on five or six enquiries at a time. Now I have to work on one [at a time]. I won’t start another one until I’ve come to a conclusion with that first one.”

Her clients are thankfully, loyal, supportive – and financially comfortable. Jenny proudly reads out a message she received the day before from one customer who she’d just told about her condition.

“She replied to say: ‘Bless. Your travel advice is too special not to give out’,” Jenny smiles.

But as supportive as her clients are, Jenny says it’s hard not to feel embarrassed when she sometimes forgets to call them back or respond to queries. “They have to keep chasing me, which I don’t like, and there’s nothing I can do about it."

Her kitchen cupboards are adorned with Post-It notes, she says, “just so that I know what I’ve got to do as I live alone”. And she sometimes struggles with day-to-day life. “Sometimes I’ll be watching a TV programme and it’ll go onto the adverts and I don’t even know what I’m watching.”

Good days and bad days

But despite the challenges, Jenny doesn’t want to retire any time soon. “I’m not there yet. I do have good days and bad days. I didn’t have a good week last week. I had quite a lot of anxiety last week.”

What does a bad day look like? “Some days I just lose my mojo and I don’t want to do anything. And then I get upset because I’ve now given myself more work to do. But they’re very supportive at Holidaysplease,” she adds.

Jenny explains that when she makes a booking “they check it all for me". "I don’t ask them to do it but they offer to," she insists. 

“If there’s something that I’ve done wrong; if I’ve forgotten to put the client’s date of birth in or I’ve forgotten to put the middle name in, it will come up as a red flag on our system.” Jenny also makes sure to work with “the same few tour operators that support me”. “These tour operators are patient with me, because I need to check everything over.”

It’s the admin which Jenny admits often poses the biggest problems. “I hate admin so much. I’ll be in the middle of something and then I might lose interest go and make a cup of tea and forget what I was doing.”

That’s when the Holidaysplease team step in. “They will remind me that I haven’t done this yet; they say ‘don’t worry I’ll do it for you’.”

’Please don’t be offended...’

One of the biggest challenges for Jenny is industry events. Matching up names and faces is often a real struggle, she says. “Sometimes I go to travel agent events and people say to me: ‘Hi, Jenny, how are you?’ And I think, God, who the hell’s that?’

“I always say to people to please don’t be offended if I don’t recognise you or don’t say hello to you. I honestly don’t know who you are and I do apologise. I may think about it afterwards and I’ll feel bad.”

Despite this, Jenny is resolute in her commitment to staying on top of the latest industry developments. She says she still enjoys fam trips and even travelled to the Clia RiverView conference earlier this month.

She also has a plea for others in the industry.  “I would urge people to be a respectful of an illness like this; it controls your life.

"There needs to be more compassion towards people in general [in travel]. Not just with dementia, but those who are suffering with mental stress,” she says. “Working in travel is stressful. [Being an agent] is a stressful job. And to do our job properly, we often cause that stress.

“I want to speak out about this,” Jenny insists. “You can’t sweep things under the carpet. I feel that by speaking out, it helps me to deal with it. And hopefully it will help others.”

Do you have an interesting story to tell about your life as a travel agent? Let us know! Email editor Sophie Griffiths  - sgriffiths@ttgmedia.com