Sad News 1

 Greetings

I have been looking my elderly parents  since I was made unexpectedly made redundant from my office job in 2010 .

This started out with helping with gardening and housework etc, which were becoming harder for them to do.

However, it became increasingly apparent that , whilst I was only helping my parents part time initially, they would need me more and more as time went on.

 My mother died unexpectedly in 2014 and I carried on looking after my father.

This was fine at first and he recovered quickly from mum's death, but he was then diagnosed with  Altziemer's.

The amount I had to do them rapidly began to increase and I soon had to arrange other carers to help me. I had to get extra cover from them , or get my husband, Teddy, to cover for me in order to carry on with Re-enactment.

This meant, however, that both of us couldn't be away at the same time.

Recently, we had had to increase the number of home visits per day and we had actually manged to go to a re-enactor's fayre together.

With this new care package in place we decide to go the Eastercon ( the UK national SF and Fantasy convention) in Birmingham.

As it would be a bit far to come back in an emergency, we opted to put my father into a care home for two weeks respite care. 

This was the first time I had done this, but Teddy persuaded me I need to break and that it would also be useful to see how well it worked, as there were events further away next year.

I will not regale you with the trials and tribulations of trying to arrange the respite care( as that would be a whole long blog on  its own).

Suffice it to say it was not easy and was not finally settled and signed off on until five days before we were due to go (well after we had had to commit to membership fees and hotel reservations etc).

My father was bed bound by this stage, we had no wheelchair and the home would not collect him.

Luckily, we were able to borrow a wheelchair from a friend, book a suitable taxi and get him to the home.

 He was happy and animated on the short journey, we got him settled  on the Monday and went home to prepare for a long weekend away over the Easter weekend.

Unfortunately, I was called the next morning and told that he had woken that morning with breathing problems and that he had just died.

It soon became obvious that the official paperwork would not be ready until after Easter and  I was persuaded to still go to the convention.

I will post later about the convention.

Until next time

Adieu