Bled dry

It’s common knowledge that health care in the States can be so ruinously expensive that people regularly go bankrupt trying to pay the bills.
 
It’s not so well-known that care homes in Britain are also ruinously expensive and people unlucky enough to need one can also end up bankrupt from the scale of the charges.
 
My mum was in a care home for nine months in 2018 and was paying around £3000 a month. I gather the charge nowadays could be around £1300 a week or £1500 if nursing care is included.
 
That staggering figure soon mounts up. For nine months now she could have been paying over £50,000 ($68,000). How many people have that kind of money to spare? Her local authority could have offered her some financial help but it would be far below what she needed.
 
I look enviously at Sweden, where social care for oldies is provided automatically and comprehensively by the state. Why can’t social care in Britain be provided on the same basis? Obviously it should be part of the national health service.
 
Meanwhile if granny needs long-term care, it could bleed you dry.

Carry on dozing

So last week I went to St Ives in Cambridge-shire to visit my 96 year old mum, who's now in a care home. She's well looked after and seems to be happier than when she was still in her own flat and increasingly unable to keep it in order.

She's now in a sort of twilight state between normal consciousness and complete mental detachment. Sometimes she absorbs what I'm saying and makes relevant responses. At other times she takes nothing in and I have to keep repeating myself and explaining what ought to be the obvious.

She asked me what I had had for lunch and I said a mozzarella, tomato and basil panino from Costa. She asked me what mozzarella was, although she's been to Italy numerous times and should know very well what it is. Then ten minutes later she asked me again what I had had for lunch and I went through the same rigmarole.

She increasingly lacks any curiosity about the outside world. The TV was on but she took no notice, despite some interesting items about attempts to lift an overturned lorry full of milk and the possible value of some unusual antiques.

She has no interest in my life, or Jenny's life, or anyone else's life. If I pass on any family news, she nods politely and that's it. She doesn't bother to keep in touch with any of her old friends. Political events pass her by, however dramatic or intriguing. She did however intend to watch the royal wedding.

She spends most of her time dozing and eating, happily oblivious to anything going on outside the four walls of the care home.  It seems to me a rather empty existence but it appears to be all she wants. I daresay if I reach the grand old age of 96 that'll be enough for me too. Why bother any more about the outside world?

Just carry on dozing, mum. Wishing you sweet dreams.

Pic: Not my mum but she looks very similar

Moving day

I've just been over to St Ives in Cambridge-shire to see my 95 year old mum move into a care home. It seems like an excellent place, with staff who are genuinely committed to keeping the residents happy and maintaining a sense of independence wherever possible. She certainly looked happy enough after a few hours there meeting the staff and other residents.

Me and the rest of the family - her daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter - were reluctant to see her move into a care home, as so many seem to be little more than uncaring warehouses for the elderly, and as my mum has always been fiercely independent.

But we had to admit it was time for her to move somewhere she would be constantly monitored, as she was having frequent falls and sometimes lying on the floor for hours before being found. She also wasn't eating properly or drinking enough. She was feeling increasingly isolated and unsafe.

Unfortunately she seems to have declined rapidly over the last few months, as each further fall undermined her confidence and made her afraid of going out or simply moving around the flat. Just a year ago she was still fit enough for me to take her to some local coffee shops and sit by the river. And before that she was still going on cruises and seaside breaks.

Now we've started on the Herculean task of clearing mum's old flat of all the accumulated clutter and odds and ends that have been piling up for years, since she was reluctant to throw anything away - newspaper cuttings, old bills, Christmas cards, letters, holiday brochures, never-worn clothes, you name it. I think it was all a kind of security blanket.

So we hope she'll be content in her new surroundings. We'll just have to keep our fingers crossed for a few weeks until she's really got the feel of the place. Hopefully she'll be thriving.

Pic: Not my mum, but she looks remarkably similar

Halting the axe

I fear the public spending cuts following hard on the heels of the massive banks bail-out are going to hit the weak and vulnerable as much as the well-padded.

So a round of applause to one woman who's determined to stop that happening and is being witch-hunted by local council leaders out to save cash by closing care homes.

Yvonne Hossack, a 53 year old solicitor, has saved at least 80 care homes for the elderly and disabled. So thwarted local councils tried to get her struck off the solicitors' roll for unprofessional conduct such as misusing confidential information.

She was very anxious they might succeed and care home residents would no longer have a sympathetic lawyer to fight for their rights. Fortunately all the most serious charges were dismissed and Yvonne is free to continue her vital work.

Good for her, taking on these controversial cases that other solicitors would shy away from in favour of something more routine. She wanted to use her legal skills to defend those who were being mistreated and victimised, and was prepared to face the wrath of the axe-wielding councils.

It's yet another example of whistleblowers being hounded while the wrongdoers who've been caught out neglecting the vulnerable, committing fraud or otherwise abusing their positions so often just carry on regardless.

Too many politicians seem to lose whatever social conscience they had as soon they've got their hands on the levers of power, and some of them are actively competing with each other to slash public services to the bone.

If the recipients are too old and frail to make any effective protest, so much the better. Thank God there are more ethical souls like Yvonne to stop them in their tracks.

Pic: Yvonne Hossack. Her website is at http://www.hossackssolicitors.com/

Life expectancy

How lucky we all are! Average lifespans are going up all the time and before long there'll be centenarians galore, not to mention armies of ninety-year-olds.

But do we really want to live to 100? Do we really want to live so long we can hardly remember what we did for a living or who we once shacked up with, let alone our first love or our teenage rampages?

Why is length of life considered so much more important than quality of life? What's the point of reaching 101 if by that time you're half-blind, deaf, senile and stuck in a wheelchair?

Personally I'd prefer dropping dead at (say) 70, still in good health, mentally alert and savouring life to the full, to staggering on for another thirty years becoming more and more decrepit and an increasing burden to everyone else.

In fact I'd like to keel over in the middle of something I particularly enjoy like climbing Slieve Donard*, scoffing a huge bowl of ice cream or exploring some foreign city.

I certainly don't want to end up in a so-called care home, where the chances are instead of being cared for I'd be treated with casual indifference by underpaid, uncommitted staff.

No, I'm happy to stay alive as long as I'm firing on all cylinders and my brain is still fizzing with all the spectacle and novelty of the world around me.

Once the fun disappears and my body starts falling apart, I hope someone will do the decent thing and pop something nasty in my morning coffee to save me from a miserable fadeout.

Frankly I want to go out with a bang and not a whimper. And with my dignity still intact.

* Highest mountain in Northern Ireland, one of the Mourne Mountains.