July 16, 2008: the waiting game

Healthy living Blog

Carer Diary

July 16: the waiting game

One by one, Marianne Talbot and her relatives are dropping like flies, while they wait for a final funding decision and a bed to come free for her mother at the specialist dementia nursing home

I like to be doing things. I can’t bear waiting. But at the moment waiting is the name of the game.

Funding is one thing we’re waiting for. Mum apparently has a good chance of getting 100% NHS funding. If she gets it her only contribution to her own care will be the £130 a week she has been assessed as capable of affording from her state pension and her miniscule widow’s pension. If she doesn’t get 100% funding she’ll have to go into a cheaper home. Or the family will have to ‘top up’ her contribution.

Clearly the funding decision is an important one. I provided all the financial and other information months ago. No idea why it is taking so long.

But it’s not as frustrating as it might be because we are also waiting for a bed. The home we’re after, specialising in advanced dementia, has just had a new twenty-bed wing built. You’d think that means twenty available beds wouldn’t you?

That shows how little you know!

The twenty beds cannot be allocated until they have been ‘registered’. This, apparently, might take four months. FOUR MONTHS?? How can registering twenty desperately needed beds take four months? Are there hundreds of other new beds waiting to be registered? I doubt it. In the meantime twenty carers – and their families - are at their wits’ end.

When I last spoke to our care manager mum was classified as ‘in crisis’. This puts her near the top of the list.

But mum was in crisis because I was in crisis. Mum is now with my brother and his wife. I am no longer in crisis. Does this mean that mum may be trumped by someone else? I wonder which crisis will result in mum’s actually getting into a home? How ‘crisis-like’ must a crisis be before something is done?

That there will soon be another crisis is obvious. My sister, who was travelling round the family with mum, has had to go home suffering from stress. My brother and his wife, in their late sixties, are not in the best of health. My sister-in-law in particular has dangerously high blood pressure. Looking after mum is not going to help that. My aunt and uncle, in their late seventies, managed only ten days, thanks to my aunt’s arthritis.

And although I am no longer the sobbing wreck of three weeks ago I have reached the end of the road. Mum cannot come back to me. I wanted to see mum through to her death. But I can’t. End of story.

So mum might not herself be in crisis, but those around her are dropping like flies.

Saga and caring

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