Health

All posts tagged Health

Please Help my Daughter to Heal

Published 25/02/2017 by damselwithadulcimer

There can’t be a mother in the world who doesn’t pray for the health of her unborn child throughout the nine months of her pregnancy. However, delivering a healthy baby is only the beginning. It has not all been plain sailing for our family and one of my daughters is struggling with a cruel combination of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Toxic Mould Poisoning.

As a writer, poet and facilitator of creative writing workshops (although she is not well enough to work at present) Roberta can tell her story much better than I can. I am linking to her appeal to raise enough money so that she can relocate to a warmer and healthier climate for as long as it takes for her body to have an opportunity to heal itself.

We are grateful for all donations, and I would urge you to feel free to share this among others, who you feel would be able to respond.

Click here to read the story/donate

When the Old Man’s Friend Came to Call

Published 10/09/2014 by damselwithadulcimer

The Respiratory Team paid one of their routine visits to mum at the beginning of the week and were concerned enough to feed straight back to the Community Matron. Sarah put in an appearance later in the day, listened to mum’s chest and diagnosed the beginnings of pneumonia. Luckily we had antibiotics and steroids in the flat just in case of such an eventuality, but one of the inhalers had run out over the weekend, so Sarah set off to the GP’s surgery to make sure that the relevant prescriptions were issued and that mum’s doctor knew she was unwell.

Having smugly congratulated myself on producing the standby medication so promptly I was surprised and worried to find the box of Amoxicillin was empty… I made a further frantic phone call to the GP, sharing Sarah’s earlier frustration at having to go through various menus, to ensure that a script was sent direct to the pharmacist and then despatched to mum before the end of the day. Trust me to choose that day to visit without my car.

Whilst I was worrying about the missing antibiotics I decided it was time to move the furniture in the bedroom. We had been advised that the bed (with its rubber mattress) should not be alongside the radiator, so Emma, the carer, and I emulated Pickfords removal men whilst we dragged chairs and chests of drawers out of the room in order to swing the bed around. Initially we placed it facing the wrong way, where the telly would not be visible, so we had to disturb mum again, much to her annoyance. After plugging the mattress and the control pad back into the wall we found that the pad was doing nothing at all and the mattress was flat. Cue more complaints and moans from the patient. The light was on but it was completely unresponsive at 5.10 in the afternoon when Medequip had gone home for the day. The emergency number that was supposed to be on the equipment was not there and googling for it was impossible given that the flat is in a mobile phone black spot. Although I had no car I at least had my mobile WiFi so was able to get online, find a number and make the necessary call. It was all so simple once I was told how to rectify the problem, but why on earth weren’t those instructions delivered with the bed?

The next day was spent trying not to worry about mum and hoping that she would respond to her medication as the alternative was hospitalisation and we were fully aware that she would not want to go there. I know now that she is doing better, so that’s another mini crisis averted.

Sarah was also concerned that mum has generally deteriorated over the 10 days since she last saw her and that her COPD has worsened so she delivered an End of Life Pack, containing the necessary injectable medication for making mum comfortable when the time comes. She also informed me that she is making an application to the local council for continuing funding. Whether we get it will be another matter, but we are keeping everything crossed. We have been using mum’s personal savings to fund her care and the money is disappearing rapidly; it would be a relief not to have to fret about finances too.

So for now we can wave goodbye to the Old Man’s Friend and hope that the funding is approved and that mum remains stable.

Happy pills are here again…

Published 13/08/2014 by damselwithadulcimer

It’s been a long journey since mum broke her hip nearly eighteen months ago, and was then diagnosed with Vascular Dementia earlier this year. At one time I used to visit once a week and we would generally go for a pub lunch or afternoon tea, now I visit twice a week and have trouble finding things to talk about. As time goes on she has less and less interest in the outside world, friends and family and no longer follows her beloved soaps on the telly. Her frailty and disability mean that leaving the flat involves a great deal of effort. An able bodied person would feel tired contemplating the difficulty of getting her ouside and into the car.

Initially Careline, with its accompanying red buttoned bracelet was a safety back up; now it is pressed with increasing regularity and ambulances arrive and paramedics pick mum up from the floor when she has fallen and persuade her to go to hospital when they think it necessary. There are the other occasions when she summons help but can’t hear the responder at the other end, so of course they send in the emergency services as a precaution – what mum refers to as the army and the navy arriving. We’ve given up dashing over when Careline phone telling us that mum has been buzzing: we are aware of our physical and mental weaknesses and the need to try to conserve our strength. As she still refuses to move to residential care, we remain on alert, anxious and worried what each day will bring.

When we were visiting every day after mum’s discharge from hospital with a repaired hip, we soon realised that we couldn’t carry on indefinitely. The almost daily hospital visits, plus more than three weeks of going to her home every day (in my case remaining until she was safely in bed at night) began to take their toll. So we scaled back, in my case to twice a week as I have already mentioned.

I could feel myself becoming tired, ratty, irritable and tearful, but believed I needed to do my best for my mother. Whenever I felt exhausted it somehow never seemed like exhaustion when I moved on to the next level of even greater fatigue. For some months I (who rarely have trouble sleeping) have been suffering from various degrees of insomnia.

I gleefully pounced on the opportunity of taking a course of stress management workshops provided by my local Carers organisation. Believe me it is easy to do the theory, but trying to practise positive thinking, flip the negativity and fit in relaxing meditations is not as easy as you want it to be. We all bonded well and it was therapeutic to discuss our caring roles and their challenges with others in a similar position.

I also attended dementia awareness workshops, which will lead to another regular support group. In addition I have been seeing a counsellor for about a year and trying to work through problems that go back to my childhood and are now compounded with everything else happening in my life.

The final straw was when I needed to visit my GP at the weekend and the waterworks welled up again. She insisted on anti-depressants and I didn’t argue. If they take the edge off the anxiety and the stress I don’t care. This hamster is unable to climb out of her wheel at present, so she keeps whirring round and round and swallows her pills like the good little girl mummy taught her to be.

 

Mothers and Daughters: in Sickness and in Health

Published 16/08/2013 by damselwithadulcimer

Five months ago my mother did what every daughter dreads; she fell and broke her hip (the precise medical term is a fracture of the neck of the femur).  Our experience of the National Health Service was very different from the headline revelations in the newspapers at the time.

She was initially taken by ambulance to her local hospital, and was then transferred a few hours later to St Mary’s in Paddington for surgery.  We made jokes that the hospital transport was in conjunction with DHL, but she arrived safely, was not lost in transit and arrived on time. In spite of tales of doom to the contrary, the operation to pin her hip took place on a Saturday, she survived the weekend and by the following Monday she was being attended by physiotherapists attempting to re-mobilise her.  It was a slow process, but she was eventually discharged from hospital two weeks after her initial admission with a package of three home carers per day. The local council in conjunction with the hospital also supplied a frame around the lavatory, a commode for use in the bedroom (to save walking to the bathroom at night) and fitted a rail to the side of the bed.  The Zimmer frame that came home with her was a godsend.

The hard work began once she was back in her own flat, which is luckily on the ground floor.  The first carer arrived around 7.30am on the day after discharge.  Unfortunately mum was not completely wide awake when the bell rang and she managed to fall on her way to opening the front door.  The paramedics were again summoned but no damage had been done so she wasn’t taken back to hospital.

From then on the daily visits were shared by the three carers: one in the morning to help her up, get washed and dressed (initially it was just to change one nightdress for another one), get her something to eat and prompt her to take her medication.  The lunchtime carer saw to food and medication, and the evening carer took charge of a strip wash and change of night-clothes, as well as reminding her to take her pills.  In addition my sister and I visited every day for more than three weeks, fussing over her like mother hens and attending to every other need, and probably doing far more than we should.  We actually overdid what was necessary and encouraged more dependency than we should have, but that wasn’t apparent until sometime further down the line.

One thing we soon became aware of is of how dedicated the home carers are.  They are paid disgustingly: not much more than the minimum wage and do not receive any payment when travelling between jobs.  The majority rely on public transport and some of them work 12 hours a day just to earn enough to live on.  The media is now drawing attention to the practice by many companies of zero hours contracts; most of these carers, who are employed by agencies, fall into that category.  Our capitalist society values productivity and financial gain over care and compassion.  In a country where the older population is outgrowing the younger members of the community this is a sorry state of affairs that should be addressed at government level.  Most of us will become old or infirm in later life and the value attached to human beings and the care they need is far more important than money made, squandered or gambled by bankers and businesses.  Every housebound elderly person is or was somebody’s mother or father, aunt or uncle, brother or sister and deserves to be treated as a person who matters and should be regarded with dignity and respect.

In addition to the package outlined above, mum was also assigned a care coordinator (as part of the re-enablement service) and received weekly visits from a physiotherapist.  Unfortunately my stubborn, Taurian mother disregarded a lot of what the healthcare professional told her and neglected to do her exercises unless nagged.  The result is that after five months she has still not regained full mobility in her right leg and remains dependent on us.  After five months, journeys outside of the home are a struggle that exhaust her and tire us.  She insists that her legs work, when they obviously don’t, hates using the two sticks that have been provided and insists that she can walk better with one.  Although her GP and her physiotherapist have patiently explained the benefits to her, her mobility and her balance of using the pair, it is an uphill battle.  She flatly refused to use the three-wheeled walker that was supplied and argues against going out in the portable wheelchair that I acquired from a friend.

Thanks to healthier diets and better healthcare we are all living longer.  Older daughters (and sons), such as my sister and myself, will fall into the roles of our parent’s carers as long as we are fit and healthy enough to do so.  Twenty-first century parent/child role reversal seems to be here to stay.