I've decided to start a fresh this year, delete all the messy posts and start with something on a more serious note.
I'm going to post about my Nanna, Paula. (everything included in this blogpost is either gathered from my memories, observed or told to me by my Nanna during visits)
In 2010 my grandad passed away, after 63 years of marriage and two and half years of dating Paula and Albert were parted. I remember Nanna after the funeral sitting on her yellow sofa, sipping champagne that had been arranged and provided by my step-mother of around eleven years, Julie.
Nanna began to cry, she hadn't dropped a tear during the entire funeral, through Nat King Cole's -"When I fall in love" Chosen by her daughter Joanna.
"When i fall in love, it will be forever
or i'll never fall in love
In our restless world, love is ended
before it's begun
and too many moonlight kisses
seem to cool in the warmth of the sun
When i give my heart, it will be completely,
or i'll never give my heart
and the moment i can feel, that you feel that way too
is when i fall in love, with you."
Nanna apologised for crying, we all hastily replied 'it's okay' 'it's alright'.
Then she said, "In sixty years, not one crossed word"
not in those sixty+ years did Paula & "poor" Bert, once argue.
In those 63 years of marriage, Paula and Bert, adopted two children, Timothy Paul and Joanna Elizabeth, Both worked effortlessly, owned and ran a toy shop located of London Road of St leonards, Lived in many beautiful houses.
After Alberts death, Altziemers was triggered in Nanna's brain, causing her to become forgetful, Only the little things, forgetting certain items at the shop, or forgetting that we were due to visit on saturday's. The illness slowly increased when i began coming to Nanna's every thursday to clean as Nanna didn't remember to unless prompted to. Dirty clothes, floors, dishes, cob webs, dirty sheets. Then another health problem approached which was of a more personal matter which lead to Nanna needing help personally cleaning herself. She was living with an extreme medical condition, which the NHS would not help enough. I began to occasionally change my own Nan out of clothes that wern't only covered in dirt, scrubbed floors and cleaned her bedroom that only a ferrel child would be allowed to live in. We were advised that it were best that Nanna be transferred to a nursing home, but first they asked us to 'try' one, giving Nanna a one week stay in a care home/rehabilitation assessment centre called Milton Grange. Nanna had too much pride and didn't want to go. She made me promise her, that I'd never let anybody put her in "one of those homes". Two weeks later, her first day started at Milton Grange. Staff were excellent. But one day we had a phonecall concerning some bleeding coming from Nanna's personal problem, so she had been sent to the hospital but she was back at Milton Grange now. So i intimately travelled to Eastbourne to see her. "Where's my Nanna? Paula Card?" I was told she was still in the hospital from the night before. Fuming, i took a cab to the hospital to be told my Nanna wasn't there nor checked in! So back i went, worrying, an old lady with dementia, lost! Again she wasn't at Milton Grange (another cab fair) So the hospital were phoned. She was found in the departure ward. Ridiculous! I left Nanna at Milton Grange for another week visiting her every day, some nights she cried. One evening she fell asleep in bed as i read her poems from a Longfellow book. I then sat in the chair next to her bed and cried. Dad received a few phonecalls one morning and Nanna had been transferred without our concent to a "care"home called Tredegar. Now i have no quarms with shaming this facility for what it is. First of all Nanna was put in there against her will and secondly for almost a year until we moved her to her new and current excellent home. In the year Nanna spent at Tredegar we or rather she experienced the following:
- Being fed a bowl of scrambled egg for dinner, main meal, nothing more. Nanna could feed herself, She's is active and able. So what was the excuse for this lack of care in the food?
- Nannas 'Help' alarm was unplugged from the wall multiple times by the staff
- I walked in on Nanna, indecent and very 'dirty' i asked for some staff to help. It took half an hour for them to come
- The fee's. Charging for a double room which was over a thousand a week for the worst service of care i've ever seen.
- The first day Nanna arrived she was sharing a room with a woman in her fourties with no disabilities apart from psychical, she was obese and shouting at the television, which insistently was Jeremy kyle. Nanna was terrified, being quite a shy lady.
- I came in one day to see her and they had cut her hair into a prison cut
- I'll come back to this list.
Nanna now lives at Bannow Retirement home in St Leonards, which i cannot praise enough. Friendly staff, Excellent care, Three course dinners, lunch, breakfast everyday. A sherry or brandy in the evening. Lovely bedrooms and last but not least they hassled the doctors so much that in november she had the operation after two years living with a six inch anal prolapse to fix it. Which as you can imagine was a HORROR STORY. She now lives a full life. Enjoys her food and although her mind is declining, She's doing as well as could possibly be.
She has told me many stories about Bert and Her life together, She's told me stories about living during the war and a particularly funny story she remembers every visit when she began to sing at school during a music lesson and the teacher said 'don't do that you're putting the others off'. In the future I'll write another blogspot about her. Which will mostly include the stories she has told me about her's and berts lovely life. This was just on a boring note. During these two years I've heard lines such as 'I don't want to die' 'Please don't leave me, you'll never come back' 'Why am i even here anymore' and it's had it's fair share of emotional damage to me. It shows that caring for the ones you love even until the end is going to take some sacrifices. I just wish someone had been there to help myself and Nanna emotionally or with the hands on events. Whilst my Dad covered the financial side of things. Nanna's life savings are now disolving completely into care bills and personally i think it's utterly disgusting for someone to not have help with funding after paying into taxes all her life and her husband being a war veteran AND retiring at eighty-two years old.
That's all for this blog post. Here's some photographs of Nanna over the past two years, obviously the best not the world and a collage of her and Bert, oh and some very unflattering very tan photos of myself. Thankyou for reading. xx
