Enigma Variations

Letting go when you have to – looking after our old folk

October 25th, 2007

I got the news this week that mum won’t be going home any more.

Eight years ago she had a severe stroke and has been paralysed on one side and unable to speak ever since. She was already in poor health and dad had been looking after her for quite a while. She’s now 82, he’s 84. Apart from help getting her up in the morning and putting her to bed at night he gets no other help apart from the occasional period in respite care. For all that time he’s had disturbed nights – up four or five times a night – and like anyone would he’s struggled with lack of sleep. He’s done all the cooking and cleaning and all the other chores of caring for an invalid. Basically it’s been wearing him out, but he’s a man of great integrity and sense of duty so he’s carried on, with little complaint except when at the end of his tether.

After a lot of persuading he finally agreed to let the doctor recommend that mum be assessed for care and this week we got the report to say that she would be kept in the respite hospital until a place could be found in a nursing home.

As might be expected he’s torn between relief that he doesn’t have to face the daily and nightly grind of constant care, and guilt that he couldn’t do it any more.

As yet we don’t know what it’s likely to cost so that constant worry of the last few years is still to be resolved.

As for me I’m relieved for him, while sorry for the fact that mum is having to leave her home behind. But most of all I’m angry – that someone who fought for his country in some of the worst fighting of the Second World War, sustaining injuries that would dog him for many years and cast a cloud over my own childhood, should be left to cope with such a situation for so long with poor advice and little backup. Our elderly people should be allowed to enjoy their final years without such worries and stresses. They’ve done their bit; fought, worked, brought up children, paid their taxes and their National Insurance, contributed in every way to the economy and the well-being of the country. We should honour them, respect their experience and their knowledge. Instead we treat them like a burden that we’d like to forget about.

A land fit for heroes? Hah!

Maybe we should put the politicians in nursing homes and tell them that’s where they are going when they get voted out. That might change things.

Entry Filed under: Friends and family, Personal