We ached too much yesterday morning to go out into the cottage garden even though it was our last chance to clear up, weed, prune or do any other urgent jobs – we had to take the decision to just let it be.Â
Instead, as the sun was shining, we went for a short drive over to Castle Kennedy Gardens to have a wander on their snowdrop trail. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was…fresh air, sunshine and nature – it lifts the spirits like nothing else…forget retail therapy (I am not a shopper anyway) being outdoors after such a wet and dismal winter is like a good dose of medicine or perhaps I should say vitamins.
And now we are homeward bound after a lovely restful week. I feel ready to take on the house again when we get home; I have even been planning in my head what I will be decluttering next. There are many items that I just do not use taking up valuable shelf space and I know that I will probably not get around to using them this year either. Many of them are quite inexpensive; some of them will have been given to me in the first place, so cost me nothing. My idea is to empty a cupboard completely of its contents and then only put back the things that I actually use or have used in the last 6 months and then review whatever is left.
We stay in the Premier Inn overnight at Carlisle to break the journey home and rest my back but we will no longer be having the breakfasts there. We only have Continental breakfast anyway – I know how much people love their full cooked breakfast but they are not for me I have never had a liking for fried food. I usually choose yoghurt with a spoonful of the fresh berries on top and then have 2 slices of toast and a cup of tea and it costs £7.95, DH has museli and a croissant and a coffee for the same price. You can, for the price, eat all you want but I can’t eat more so I feel it is all a bit wasted on us and over time the breakfast menu is becoming more limited – decaff tea is no longer available, the yoghurts on offer are now down to two types 0% fat greek yoghurt or strawberry, both by Yeo Valley but in smaller tubs than you buy at the supermarket. Last week they had taken off the brown wholemeal bread and replaced it with what looks like the 50:50 type and it is that awful squidgy steam baked Mother’s Pride type (goodness knows why any mother would be proud of that). I expect I could complain to the powers that be that run the Premier Inn chain but I doubt they would be the least bit bothered…their priorities these days, like many other businesses, is a nice big profit over customer care and welfare. I presume if they keep limiting the menu bit by bit they can save a fortune over time.
So all in all it is not worth us paying out to have breakfast there. Instead we are going to take a bowl of our museli and buy a pint of milk and a yoghurt from the garage just down the road. I can cut up a Kiwi or banana to have with it. We can eat that in the hotel room and make a drink – I will take my own decaff teabag and then later when we are back on the road we will stop at Booths in Penrith or a Costa who both sell a better slice of toast with nice thick wholemeal slices.
Well must go now I have a little packing and cleaning to do before we go. I like to leave the caravan tidy and clean for the next visit and we switch off our fridge because there are often numerous power cuts here (one lasted 3 days) so it has to be emptied and wiped out each time. We have just about managed to eat down all the food we brought and bought – one of the drawbacks to staying in the hotel overnight is trying to keep any chilled foods cool so it is useful for us to finish off any cheese or butter by the end of our visit.
I thought whilst I am talking about the Premier Inn you might like to hear a funny story.
We always stay in the same Premier Inn just off Junction 42 on the M6 at Carlisle (you may know it), and we have over the course of the last 18 months had various different rooms some better than others but never the same one twice – we have had rooms with a very smelly shower curtain, hand soap with a faulty pump, lamps that don’t work, very large spiders, no heating and no toilet tissue but have never experienced the room with no window until our previous stay last December. It was a winter’s evening so when we opened the door to room 101 we were not surprised to see the curtains already closed. However, the first thing I always do when we go into a room is open the window. Imagine my surprise when I pulled back the curtain to be greeted by a blank wall!
Well, I actually fibbed a bit here because when I looked up there was a window but it was way up at the top of the wall near the ceiling, just a long slit really and impossible to see out of or reach to open. This is the window from the outside of the building just above the reception area below.
DH reckoned it had perhaps been a store room at one time and then converted. It felt too claustrophobic for me so we had to ask to be moved. ‘People either love it or hate it’ reception said – you can guess which camp I am in.
I have been quite neglectful of my little space here recently….time has just evaded me.
As much as I have wanted to write, and the intention is always there, somehow I just never found that moment….and then when I did WordPress decided it was not going to let me preview my posts. But all good now – I solved the problem before they did.
A lot has happened since my last entry and thankfully I do manage to keep my little journal going that sits by my bed and is a useful memory bank and reminder of why I am not finding the time to write here very often.
I have no doubt that followers, readers and fellow bloggers will be eager for an update just as I am when someone disappears off the scene for any length of time – and I thank those of you who have been in contact, checking I am still here and OK.
And now for the news.
Mum is home now and settled back into her little apartment. It was touch and go whether she would leave the care home or not but she decided to give it a try and in fact we found out during the arrangements that due to the possibility of requiring council funding in the future she had no option but to go back home (*see more details on this below).
She came home on 18th September and from then ’till now she has taken this long to settle in (well as much as she ever will). I do not like to speak ill of people but the social worker appointed was next to useless. One day out of the blue in August I had a phone call from her to say she was going to carry out an assessment on mum and could I be there. Well given I live 90 miles away and she arranged this assessment for 9am one morning, no I couldn’t and my sister was away on holiday too so she couldn’t attend either.
The social worker chose not to rearrange for a time convenient for us and saw mum on her own. Once again she, as the previous social worker, assessed mum as having capacity (which I always question as she cannot retain or undersatnd a lot of information). She assessed her as being able to go back home but NOT requiring 24 hour care even though she had 24 hour care in the care home and required help to get to the toilet in the night. I believe this assessment was more to do with the fact that the council will not provide or pay for 24 hour care outside of a care home if mum wasn’t able to pay her carers privately.
*The shocking side of all this, which mum’s social worker just ‘happened’ to mention and I hope anyone in our situation will take note, is that if an elderly person is assessed as not requiring 24 hour care and they themselves decide they would prefer to be in a care home which is of course 24 hour care and then they become eligible for financial help provided by the local council (once the magic figure of £23,500 of savings has been reached) then the council are not oblidged to step in and pay for your 24 hour care if you were assessed as not needing it. This is very worrying for anyone who does not have enough savings to pay their way privately.
Once the social worker had done the assessment she promptly went on annual leave for 2 weeks without putting in place a leaving date for mum and this cost us another £2,000 in care home fees for a further two weeks delay. It would have cost us over £4,000 as the care home work on a 4 week notice period but the manager decided she would waiver the 2 weeks after mum left because of the failing of the social worker to act promptly.
When the social worker came back from holiday we set a date for mum to leave (Monday 18th September) and she said she would make all the arrangements for a home care package and transport to be in place for that day – which was the following week. Luckily, I rang social services on the Thursday (four days before my mum was due to go home) for an update as I had not heard anything and found that the social worker was not only on holiday again but had done nothing towards getting my mum home. It was now urgent that something was done but social services would not supply another social worker to sort this out so I had to do all the arranging with the care agency and book transport myself with the help of the admin clerk in the social services department who stepped in and was a great help and could only apologise for the social workers lack of arrangements.
Mum now has a care agency going in four times every day as required by the social workers assessment. Her first visit is at 9am when the carer goes in to get her up, washed and dressed and on her last visit at 6pm she is put to bed – which is quite early for mum but the only time the carers had available. She has to eat her lunch around 11.30 and her evening meal around 3.30 when she has the other two visits from the carers during the day. After the last visit she spends 14 hours on her own with no one to help her until the carer appears at 9am again. During this time she cannot get a drink other than water at her bedside, if she is cold she cannot put her heating on -she can just about get herself out of bed to the commode beside her. If she falls or has an emergency she can use the call button she has around her neck. In the care home of course she had a buzzer to summon help to go to the toilet or get a drink made. It is all very sad and this is happening to elderly people up and down the country.
My sister continues to visit her on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday and cooks ready meals for her feezer, does all the washing and cleans throughout the flat. She works full time and has to do her work in the evening on the days she visits in the week. I ring mum every night and visit as often as we can to help my sister and ease mum’s boredom but she is definitely getting worse with her memory and her anxiety levels become so high when my sister is away that she often won’t get up and says she feels ‘off colour’ so the carers will leave her in bed as she feels safer in bed when my sister is away.
Mum pays for her care privately at the moment as she has savings above the £23,500 magic threshold – it costs her almost £800 for the week. Yes you read this correctly! Plus she has all her bills and food on top and the service charge for the apartment and council tax. The care home in comparison was £1090 a week but it was all inclusive and it was one of the cheaper places around Yarm – most of them are about £1,300 to £1,500 per week and this is only if you do not require specialist nursing care or have dementia.
If the local council do have to help with the fees their contribution is of course capped, so if you choose a more expensive place then relatives are expected to put in the additional money called a topup.
My advice is not only to start saving now for your old age but to keep fit and healthy so you can look after yourself as long as possible!!
Our life of course is not all about mum and we have had little snippets of time to take our new baby Chocolate to the park once or twice and we had a free admission day to the National Trust property at Dunham Massey.
During the school holidays we all went to see a local Halloween pantomime called the Haunted House put on by a group of amateur dramatics in the next village. It was exceptionally good – though my back was exceptionally bad and has been recently with a lot of travelling up and down to North Yorkshire to see mum. After the panto we all came back to my house for a buffet tea and the grandchildren had spent the morning making (what has now become a bit of a tradition here) place name cards – in the theme of Halloween.
Granny was a pumpkin.
We had another invasion two weeks later when everyone decended upon us again to celebrate Sweetie’s 5th birthday. She is quite taken with Hello Kitty and my SIL manage to find some stationery from the Hello Kitty era when her girls were young. We made chocolate buns with Hello Kitty toppers and of course more named place cards.
On a cold Saturday evening in November we had a little adventure with master Freddie and baby Chocolate (who slept through the whole event) in Cliffe Woods at Clayton West a village near Denby Dale (of the pie fame and not too far away from us). The event was named ‘Light up the Woods’ – a firework free zone – a trail through woodland that was alight with a wonderful display of recycled rubbish made by local groups and school children.
Since then I have been busy crafting and other such delights and all being well I should be able to give you a glimpse of my ‘efforts’ in the next few days.
Hoping you are all well – I can see most of you are happily blogging away and I am slowly catching up and you may even get a comment or two.
Gosh, just when you think life can’t get any busier….it does and hotter too.
On Bank Holiday Monday we took Little L and Sweetie out to Bradfield in Derbyshire. It is a beautiful Peak village and a conservation area. There is a place down by the river to picnic and paddle – our family have always gone there, my mum as a little girl, me and my siblings, our two daughters and now the grandchildren. We had a lovely day splashing about in the water and collected so many interesting things for granny’s nature table.
We spent the rest of the week, after they had gone back home cleaning and packing for the upcoming trip to North Yorkshire last week to stay with my younger daughter to lend a hand with Little L and Sweetie on the school run.
Sweetie started school last Tuesday but for some reason her school have a policy of only taking new reception children for half days…and alternating mornings and afternoons for the first week. This is not only very difficult to arrange for working and single mums but confuses the children no end. Sweetie has no concept that she will be spending a whole day at school next week and having school dinner there. She thinks granny will be providing lunch and taking and fetching her back at all odd times! Whilst I waited at the school gates it was obvious that many working mum’s couldn’t be there for their children on their first day and had to depend on a mix of grandparents, friends and even neighbours to help out and get their little ones to and from school at the appropriate times.
Master Freddie on the other hand, at a different school, starts on whole days straight away but does not start until this coming Tuesday (one week after the main school returned from the summer) – again very difficult for working mums, especially those like my daughter who work within the school system so cannot take time off. The gradual introduction to school is not practised everywhere and the irony is that most of these kids have been spending far longer hours in nursery than they will at school – Master Freddie will be at school 4 hours less and will feel it is a very short day indeed.
Whilst up in North Yorkshire we visited mum on a couple of occasions and she was in tears most of the time. The social worker who has assessed her as having ‘capacity’ and told her she could go home then went on holiday without arranging any care package or making a date for her leaving. So in the meantime mum has been very anxious and one day wants to go home but the next day wants to stay in the care home as she doesn’t think she will cope at home. She has been assessed as needing four care visits during the day but no overnight care so that will take some getting used to as presently in the care home mum can press the buzzer for help if she needs assistance during the night.
Mum is presently self funding as she exceeds the threshold where the local council have to step in and foot the bill so of course the social worker is in no rush to get mum home as it is mum’s money paying the care home bills. Whilst on the short term placement we have been paying in arrears and only oblidged to give one weeks notice. Now the social worker has assessed her as being able to go home this arrangement seems to have terminated and the care home have billed us for the whole of September in advance and we have to give 4 weeks notice. So it might be the end of October before mum can go home as the social worker has not arranged a care package and been able to supply us with a date for leaving so that we can give notice. This will cost mum around £9,000. Of course there is no urgency for the social worker to get this mess sorted as the council are not paying!
I have also been told by social services that if mum did choose to stay in the care home and then her savings fall below the threshold the council would not pick up the bill because she has not been assessed as needing 24 hour care. I rather think she has not been assessed as requiring 24 hour care because they cannot provide her with 24 hour care when she goes home. So it appears that mum will have to go home even if she would rather stay. If ever you have the misfortune to be caught up in the care system you will find it is all about the financial implications to the council and not about the best care of the elderly and vulnerable.
I have no doubt I will be on the phone for most of the week trying to pin down the social worker as she is back from her hols.
It is Heritage week this week and I have made a note of some of the interesting places we might visit. Yesterday we went to Beningbrough Hall (a national Trust property to the north of York) on our way home. My daughter, Little L and Sweetie came with us as it was free entry under the Heritage scheme. We had a little picnic in the shade and then explored the grounds and house. They have a rather unusual tower in the grounds beside the lovely play area for the children in the woods, but I was disappointed that the only water on offer at the cafe was £2.50 a bottle!
I do have plans for the coming 2 weeks where time allows, and hopefully it will not be as exhausting as last week. After all the unpacking, washing and ironing the garden will have priority – weather permitting, and I would like to put another maintenance coat of paint on the shed and greenhouse before the winter. We desperatley need a new garage door too and have arranged for a local company to come and quote.
As far as the house is concerned I would like to give the office / craft room a good clean and I do need to make a few more cards mainly to try and use up some of the card blanks that I bought.
I hope you all have a good week and enjoy the weather – it is a touch too hot for me and gardening might have to be kept to a minimum.
Thank you for all the comments on my last post and thank you Rachel for getting in touch and your concern – I will reply to your email shortly. There is no denying that having blog friends in tough times does help. xx
Just thought I would drop by and say hi….it has been awhile I know but there are reasons for that which I will explain as we go along. Due to time constraints this is a post that has been written on different days, in different places over the last month or so and I hope today I will press that publish button!
The first instalment written in Scotland in the middle of June as we escaped for a few days break.
What a glorious summer, though a little more rain would not go amiss. Most years I wait eagerly for May and June to come along and then they are quite over before I feel they have even begun.
I am sitting here in a shady part of the garden in Scotland relaxing as I write this post with a glass of cool ginger beer watching the sand martins busily darting here and there, the sea is a deep azure colour with gentle surface ripples rather than waves and it feels like paradise could not be much better than this.
There is a down side to all this perfection of course and a reason I have not been posting for over a month – life here has taken a bit of a down turn – though in and amongst, as in most cases, there have been moments of sheer joy.
So perhaps the good news first….
….starting with the birth of our new grandson on the 21st May and the celebration of DH’s 70th birthday on the 25th.
May birthdays, I always think, are special – midway between spring and summer with prolonged warm days, longer lighter nights and gardens that are in full bloom. What could be more wonderful and uplifting?
It has been a long process deciding on a name for the new baby and for the purpose of my blog I will be referring to him by the preferred name of Master Freddie, his older brother, as ‘baby Chocolate’ (and before you ask I have no idea where that came from but it goes well with our second granddaughter’s pet name Sweetie chosen by her big sister Little L). Both mum and baby are doing well and managing the challenges that come up daily when you have a pre-schooler to look after at the same time.
To mark DH’s birthday we spent the day at York Garden in Adel on the outskirts of Leeds.
With the birth of the baby originally scheduled for the 24th I had not been able to book a weekend away or organise a large party for him with friends so a day out to a place of his choice seemed the next best thing. As a birthday treat we decided we would eat lunch at their cafe rather than packing up a picnic as we would normally do these days.
However, like all good plans things often don’t work out. We arrived at the garden at midday, paid our entrance fee and just as we approached the cafe door a lady barred our way and said ‘sorry the cafe had to close for the day due to unforeseen circumstances (technical issues) beyond their control’. So back to reception to ask where we might get something to eat and would they let us back in without paying again. Following their directions we drove up the road to Golden Acre Park where we were told we would find the council run cafe. It was basic and not quite what I had in mind for a special birthday treat but it did the trick and after a plate of sandwiches and a drink of tea we went back again to the gardens and spent a lovely afternoon wandering around taking lots of pictures and gathering plenty of ideas to try in my own.
A day or two later on the following Bank Holiday weekend our younger daughter came to stay with Little L and Sweetie and we prepared a simple tea party to celebrate DH’s birthday and the birth of the new baby with the family.
The grandchildren helped me prepare the party during Saturday for Sunday. They decided on a Spaceman theme for grandad! They had great fun colouring in some new place cards and party food labels using some space themed templates I printed from the internet and whilst they were occupied I set to and made some cheesey leek ramekins ready to bake later in the oven.
Everyone lent a hand in preparing a simple buffet of sandwiches and salads to go with the ramekins, and for afters nothing beats strawberries and fresh cream with jelly for the little ones.
And no birthday would be complete without a cake – a lovely summery fresh cream and strawberry sponge made and decorated by the children specially for their grandad.
And that was were the fun ended and the next few weeks of total chaos began.
I am now completing this post while staying in my mum’s flat near Yarm in North Yorkshire. She is not here at present as she unfortunately fell on her back in her kitchen the day before all our celebrations but we were told by the doctor and district nurses that she was OK – it later transpired that she wasn’t and is presently in a care home after a two week hospital stay. Hopefully, the care home is not for good, but as yet we don’t know.
It is hard for me to write this as I feel very let down by the whole NHS system – it is not just broken it is in a complete mess and so frustrating to get any honest information from anyone. This is nothing to do with the nursing staff – some of whom have been marvellous (and one we will be nominating for an award) although there have been a few along the way where delivering care to the patient is not foremost in their duties.
Sitting for hours with mum on the ward it was hard not to overhear the discussions by the staff over their patients. The lady in the next bed to mum was actually diabetic – the nursing staff did not realise until she was being prepared for discharge. She had been in there 5 days and in all that time her levels had not been taken. She had respiritory problems and was permanently on oxygen but the hospital staff then found they had been giving her double what she should have! My mum was in for almost 2 weeks and came out with a pressure sore but this was not documented on the hospital discharge letter, (but noticed by the care home staff on arrival at the home), and she had not been transferred to a pressure mattress to alleviate it. On the first night of admittance to the emergency assesment ward at about 11pm after being in A&E since 4pm the porter had to make the bed for her, there was no pillow and I had to use my folded coat until he managed to find a blanket as a temporary substitute – no nurse came to introduce herself and no one asked if she had been given a drink or any food and we had to leave her like that. In the morning when we went back a pillow had been found (just the one as they are apparently short on pillows) and at meal times there were not enough forks so the patients had to use their pudding spoons. I will not even comment on this!!
In all, over 5 days after the fall my mum had six attendances at home from paramedics and health professionals responding to my 111 calls and the telephone assessments and all of them attending her had differing opinions. She was taken to A&E twice – released the first time and hospitalised on the second. The initial x-ray showed no break and her hip fracture was only picked up on a scan on the second admittance to hospital (the pain she was in being totally disregarded). In fact the very first call I made to 111 prompted a home visit from a ‘medical professional’ and after his examination and assessment diagnosed a hip fracture but this was never taken seriously by the variety of medics, doctors and therapist who saw her after this.
She is, as many readers will know, 97 – she is in pain, she is confused (though doesn’t have dementia) and she has no idea what is happening or going to happen and to be fair neither do we. There are so many people involved – district nurses, care workers, community therapists, social workers and so much jargon. She has had endless assesments over and over and for what we have no idea either. And at the end of it all everything comes down to funding – or lack of it….but part of the problem is that they waste so much money.
On top of all this my mum is not an easy person and is convinced that she must lie completely still in bed for her hip to mend but the reality is she needs to keep moving and do exercises to keep her muscle strength but she won’t engage with the physiotherapists and keeps sending them away saying she is in too much pain, too tired, too hot, too cold …..
The care staff are not allowed to get her up and out of bed as this is only done by the physios but so far they have only managed to get her sat on the edge of the bed….once! Her 4 week NHS funding for this assessment/ rehab bed ends next week, the physio involvement will diminish considerably if she doesn’t co-operate and it is looking like she will be permanently in a care home and bed ridden for the rest of her life. To say I am frustrated is a bit of an understatement and I am now at a loss as to how I can motivate my mum to help herself.
All I can say is never be ill and end up in hospital!
10.07.23 – Further update
It has been a long 6 weeks now and I am totally exhausted spending a few days in North Yorkshire then a few days at home and grabbing bits of time to help my daughter out with the new baby by having Freddie for the day. Last Tuesday Mum was assessed again by the social worker as needing a further short term placement at the care home – for which she will now pay privately as NHS funding stopped after 4 weeks. Her room is well over £1000 a week and we still have to pay the service charge on her flat as well as a retainer for her home carers until she can go home or goes into permanent care. Before the new government rules applied (where long term patients in hospital are now transferred into care homes) her hospital stay would have been covered under the NHS.
We have had a small break through and at last they have got her moving just a little and she managed to sit in a chair for a short time this week but is not allowed in a wheelchair yet. She has had a urine infection this last week which has caused paranoia and delerium (which is not a nice condition for patient or relatives), mum was ringing me constantly on the phone from 8pm to after midnight because she couldn’t find her buzzer to alert the staff. It was just by her hand but with her confusion could not recognise it. At least that is under control now but she has been told she rings for the staff far too much and is very needy (thats my mum!).
We are at home for a few days now catching up with household things here but we did have a day out to ourselves last Saturday and went down into Derbyshire to the Open Gardens in the village of Eyam. A very interesting place and hopefully if time allows I will share a few photos in my next post.
Thank you to those readers who have been concerned about the long gap and have contacted me and welcome to my new readers who have signed up during my absence and I apologise for the rant and negativity that you will have found in this post – normal service will resume soon I hope.
Sorry about the wierd spacing near the end of the post something happened when I tried to save it and I don’t have the energy at the moment to alter it!
And to all the bloggers I usually connect with and have not, as yet, caught up with I hope you are all well and will be hearing from me soon. x
where the journey takes me 2 