Nine and seven years ago

Nine years ago, Mum lay in a bed in the new Norfolk and Norwich Hospital waiting for a free bed at the old Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, after another heart attack, it was decided that mere stints now were man enough for the job, but something called a cabbage was needed.

This, the doctors would later tell me, give Mum the oxygen she needed, and so could gain a full life again, able to walk, get out of the house and so on.

Seven years ago, two short years later, that chance of a new life was wasted, and Mum was five days from death.

After the operation at Papworth, they made her walk, every day, and until she met the minimum requirement, she would not be allowed to leave.

She did the minimum, not a step more.

Then back at the James Paget Hospital, she could not be discharged until a care package in place. This was outsourced, and to make their job easier, and more risk-aversed, Mum had a catheter fitted and was discouraged from walking by herself to the toilet, twenty steps away.

So, after an operation designed to give her a new life, the system then set up a situation in which she would move even less.

The eating of Pringles and boiled sweets, smoking again meant that her situation was even worse.

In July 2019, some two months before her death, her social worker and myself tried to persuade her to move into sheltered housing, made difficult by her use of equity release. But she was having none of it.

She stayed.

Her cleaner, and former geriatric nurse, tld me MUm was in the final stage soon after. I doubted Sheila, but she knew. I though Mum had strong genes. She did, but had used them up.

To read each day, from my old blogs, the oportinity the cabbage offered, and then the total waste of time it was on her, is heartbreaking.

Her final word on deciding against moving into a home is that all her health issues had been "cured".

The last chance ship sailed that day.

So it goes, so it goes.