He got a rare form of dementia - frontal lobe - and he found that funny, like a confirmation he was special. He was lucky in lots of other ways too. He had a loving family to take care of him at home, an increasingly intensive job.
As his dementia advanced, he also got symptoms of Parkinsons. A bit of a tremor, slow dragging feet, hands that couldn't grip cutlery properly. He unravelled, his mind and body unlearning a lifetime. So family advocates stepped up, calling the GP, the home care providers, taking him to so many appointments to confirm, yes he was really, really sick and needed more help. And help came. The GP saved my mum, granting dad access to free end of life care. When his legs unlearned walking, but his mind forgot that fact, he was admitted to a nursing home.
This was where the luck started to flicker. Underpaid and overworked staff rubbed shoulders with highly paid agency workers who didn't know anybody's names and wouldn't be around the next day to pick up any dropped balls. Dad got Covid, how do you enforce masks and quarantine on people who don't know what day it is? He was taken to hospital, but he wasn't wanted. Why couldn't the nurses in the nursing home administer an IV for pneumonia, asked the consultant, this man was dying anyway. They couldn't, said the nursing home management. So he stayed for 3 days in limbo, while the hospital tried to discharge him to a nursing home that didn't want him. Mum couldn't visit him to be his ally. In those three days he lay still, unmoved on his back. He developed horrific bedsores.
The hospital eventually sent Dad back to the nursing home semi-naked, in nothing but a soiled vest, with an angry letter from his consultant telling the nursing home off for poor care. The nursing home had never seen anyone sent back from hospital in such a state. Everyone was horrified, so were we. Dad's luck was out. He died soon afterwards. Hopefully he wasn't aware of what was going on.
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