Health
In August 2008 Attenborough entered hospital with heart problems and was fitted with a pacemaker. In December 2008 he suffered a fall at his home after a stroke, and was admitted to St George's Hospital in Tooting, southwest London. He went into a coma, but came out of it within a few days.
In November 2009 Attenborough, in what he called a 'house clearance' sale, sold part of his extensive art collection which included works by LS Lowry, Christopher Nevinson and Graham Sutherland, generating £4.6 million at Sotheby's. In January 2011 he sold his Rhubodach estate on the Isle of Bute, in Argyll, Scotland for £1.48 million.
In May 2011, David Attenborough revealed that his brother had been confined to a wheelchair since his stroke in 2008, but was still capable of holding a conversation. He added, however, that "he won't be making any more films."
Shortly before her 90th birthday, in June 2012 Sheila Sim entered the actors' home Denville Hall, for which she and Attenborough had helped raise funds. In July 2012 it was announced that Sim has been diagnosed with senile dementia.
In October 2012, it was announced that Attenborough was putting the family home, Beaver Lodge, which comes complete with a sound-proofed cinema in the garden, on the market for £11.5 million. David Attenborough stated "He and his wife both loved the house, but they now need full-time care. It simply isn’t practical to keep the house on any more."
In March 2013, in light of his deteriorating health, Richard Attenborough moved into Denville Hall to be with his wife, as confirmed by their son Michael.
Read more about this topic: Richard Attenborough
Famous quotes containing the word health:
“You already know I desire that neither Father or Mother shall be in want of any comfort either in health or sickness while they live.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“To get time for civic work, for exercise, for neighborhood projects, reading or meditation, or just plain time to themselves, mothers need to hold out against the fairly recent but surprisingly entrenched myth that “good mothers” are constantly with their children. They will have to speak out at last about the demoralizing effect of spending day after day with small children, no matter how much they love them.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)
“In the continual enterprise of trying to guide appropriately, renegotiate with, listen to and just generally coexist with our teenage children, we ourselves are changed. We learn even more clearly what our base-line virtues are. We listen to our teenagers and change our minds about some things, stretching our own limits. We learn our own capacity for flexibility, firmness and endurance.”
—Jean Jacobs Speizer. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Collective, ch. 4 (1978)