"Our Journey"

In September 2020 our Mum passed away. She was 80 years of age and deeply loved by her family and friends. 

After nine years of no one caring for her but her family a crisis and rapid decline in her health resulted in additional care and support being needed. Mum was well known to the Mental Health Team, as she had Alzheimer's, a cruel and debilitating disease. We called our key worker from Mental Health Team who quickly contacted the Community Nurse Practitioner, who with the support of equipment providers, therapists, and NHS carers was able to input care to support three times a day with immediate effect.  Ensuring all the most appropriate equipment was ordered in place, such as specialist bed, mattress, and sheets - all within 24hrs. As well as any medication mum may need to keep her comfortable.

This support was only needed for the last week of Mums life - but the support and care was a great experience - as a family we have not accessed care for Mum as we wanted to it for ourselves but we hit crisis point and couldn't cope. We didn't want her to go to hospital - she want to stay at home. This was respected and achieved.

All mum's care was given with the utmost care and dignity - from the Community Support Workers (carers) who washed, cleaned and ensured she was always clean and comfortable, delivered with dignity and respect but also allowing the family to help if they wanted to. The District Nurses ensured Mum was comfortable, pain free and not distressed by managing appropriate medications in her syringe driver.

All conversations were open, honest and frank - making sure we clearly understood what was happening, going to happen and what we needed to do - we had the opportunity to clarify what was being said, ask numerous questions and had contact numbers for staff for any time of night or day. In particular, one frank and honest conversation enabled the reconciliation of a family feud that had rolled on for in excess of 20 years, resulting in a daughter who had not seen her Mum or her siblings, coming home and being able to rekindle lost relationships and say goodbye to her Mum.

Nobody took over - the teams were there to support us all - keeping Mum central to everything that was done, respecting all our decisions and choices, and ensuring as a family we were OK and understood the journey.

All in all this was a good experience.