VIEWPOINT
In pain, our columnist reluctantly takes up her sons’ suggestion of a care home ‘holiday’ – and is surprised by what she finds
It was absolutely not my idea. The very words ‘care home’ filled me with doom, despond and, frankly, terror. They had come out of the mouth of my beloved older son, Ed. Was he seriously thinking of putting his relatively youthful, busy, far-from-retired mother into a home, which to me meant the final journey to the end of life?
To be fair to him, he was sitting at the side of my hospital bed in London where I’d spent the previous two weeks in too much pain to actually lie down following the ridiculous accident during which I had fallen out of my rather high bed at home and broken the T9 vertebra, somewhere in the middle of my spine. I had spent the two weeks in hospital sitting up and sleeping in a comfy armchair. It was the only way to avoid pain.
Discussions had taken place between several orthopaedic spinal specialists, after a number of MRI tests, who concluded that surgery would not be necessary and the bone should be treated conservatively. In other words, I should be sent home with painkillers, the support of district nurses, occupational therapists, and the company of my Ukrainian refugee Zoriana, and wait for the bone to knit before embarking on physiotherapy.
It was hard at home. I managed the stairs, the shower and getting dressed, but it soon became clear I was asking too much of Zoriana. She’s become a university student and needed to study and try to work a part-time job. She couldn’t be expected to be my carer. Both of my boys, Ed and Charlie, were anxious that I was spending too much time alone, sitting in the fireside chair, getting depressed and ever more inactive.
I began to realise that my two supportive sons had been right. I needed rest and recuperation; I needed to concentrate on physio, on getting well again without worrying about food, the laundry or looking after my three little chihuahuas and not so little cat. I began to approach the subject. Ed knew of a well-regarded care home near him in Bournemouth; he knew the physios who did a lot of work there. I could treat it as a holiday. He could even take me to the seaside. All very well, I thought, but instead of care home could we call it a rehabilitation centre? He agreed, booked me in and arranged for the cat to go to a home in the New Forest. I arranged for the dogs to go to a friend in Cornwall. Strange how grownup, loving children feel it’s their responsibility to take over the care of their ageing parents.
The centre, as I ca
