This Cancer Talk Week we are talking about the general election 2015 and about making sure cancer care is high on the political agenda. Ian is one of three supporters who have offered to share their story. Here he talks of challenges he faced trying to secure social care for his late mother.
"When my mother, Jessie, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, it eventually became clear that she could not stay safely at home alone. My father had passed away a number of years before, and my sister and I simply would not be able to offer her 24 hour care.
We looked into getting funding to provide care for her at home and could only manage to fund one hour a day. Eventually we made the decision in 2010 that she would be best suited by living in a care home.
Although she wasn’t able to live at home, my mother had always expressed a wish to die there. We thought that, once the time comes near and we could sense that the moment was coming, we would make the time to take her home and be there with her.
In the early part of the following year, mum started to lose weight. The home did nothing about it. Eventually, that summer, she was admitted to hospital where x-rays showed advance lung cancer. Because mum had come from a care home, they refused to take any further part in her care, claiming she must return to the care home.
We didn’t want her going back to the home. We had already seen a number of problems there. We managed to get her into a different care home. When we informed them that my mum’s wish was to spend her final days at home and that was something we wanted to arrange for her.
We were shocked when both the care home and the hospital said that would not be possible. They told us that she would have to stay where she was, as neither would be able to provide the proper care that she would need at home. That was frankly a bit daft, as they never provided any real care wherever she was either.
Sadly my mother passed away in July that year and she was never able to return home.
At the time we believed them all and thought it wasn’t possible. We didn’t know our options. What makes it more upsetting is the realisation that, had we made the right noises to the right people, there is a chance that she could have had her final wish.
Macmillan Cancer Support is calling on the next government to provide free social care at the end of life. My mother wasn’t able to have her last wish fulfilled. Hopefully in the future others will."
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