General Chat

Dear Rollo

I am so sorry to hear that your mother passed away.

Because of the problems you have encountered could you contact your MP?


My heart goes out to you and your family.

Take gentle care of yourself and each other.

With the deepest of respect,
Elizabeth, EOS
xx

update: the post mortem has been put back and is now scheduled for some time today. The Coroner has declined to issue a temp death cert so the last couple of weeks have been trying.

My mother's collections are interesting. She kept in contact with some of the people she nursed and the ensuing correspondence could be fun. My favorite is a set of hand made Christmas cards from a well known poet each with its own unique poem.

thank you all for your support and advice.

Remember the limbo feeling waiting on MIL's post mortem. Feel for you Rollo, our wait ended with a natural death but you are in a different situation. Hope you get clarification soon.

Rollo, after all the weeks of fighting the system I am sure that you and Mrs R will
feel utterly drained physically, mentally and emotionally. Take good care now of yourself and one another.

update:

After yet another 24 hr delay the path. has issued immediate reason for death as "furring / weakening" of the arteries though not apparently a heart attack. They dropped pneumonia. She has never had any medical treatment for her heart including the last five years! Tests a few weeks ago were fine.

I moved to England in part because it made looking after my mother much easier. If I had known just how bad health care is in England (compared to France, Germany or Benelux) plus the brexit issue I would have tried harder for us all to stay in France.

As a young man I visited Delphi in Greece. The Oracle said that I would never find both happiness and good fortune together in England. True.

"So we continue to continue
To pretend that life will never end
And flowers never bend
With the rainfall"

Furring of arteries is usually a build-up of fatty deposits, often cholesterol. It's a strange one, Rollo, especially if cholesterol tests had been done in the last couple of years or so and nothing had been noted as untoward - unless your mother kept some things private as many old people do, often refusing medication such as statins for furring of the arteries because they believe they have got to a good age without taking anything. (I'm a bit like that and I don't think I'm near your mother's age. Avoid hospitals and docs if you can, could be my motto.)

You are obviously feeling peeved and upset as you generalise about NHS services but, as I previously wrote, even in our area there are some superb medics and hospitals and some mediocre-to poor ones.

You will find no comfort in stewing over the decision not to stay in France.

Rollo, now is your time to ensure your mother gets a good adieu by your family who will by your accounts remember her with joy and love. (I use that word especially in the context of religious beliefs.) You have done the best you can under the circumstances so it is no good dwelling on 'what might have been' or 'could have, should have'. I have no idea how old she was but your mother was obviously adored by you. She will have felt that.

Don't beat yourself up and get on with the good 'send-off'. Do her proud.

As JoyLouise says, don’t beat yourself up over past decisions. You did what you thought was best at the time. No one has a crystal ball.
Most of us have made life choices which, in hindsight, may not have had the best of outcomes. Many of those outcomes were outside of our control.

Celebrate your mother’s life. It’s highly unlikely she’d have wanted you to feel guilty. Think about the things that gave her pleasure. In the last few weeks of her life, it was that spoonful of Tiramisu :-)

thank you again for all your support and advice and the poetry.

I run a facilities management company which is a unit in a much larger organisation.

Thanks to brexit for the moment I am super busy but staying in the UK is unlikely to be an option by 2019. As my OH is French and I am bilingual a hop across the Channel holds no terrors. Far from it.

Unfortunately some beaver at human resources has discovered I have 'O' levels in German and Russian and could therefore fill a gap in Bad Homburg or Berlin. That ancient O levels have little relevance to now is disregarded - I can apparently soon "pick it up". For my personal life it would be catastrophic.

It is a myth that all Germans or even professional ones speak fluent English. Fluent English is a marketing bonus for the Netherlands and Eire, for most of the rest of the EU not so much esp the larger countries.

As to my poor mother. It will now be around 10 days before we can pay our final respects etc followed by a knees up given our celtic lineage. I will be following her likely wishes, don't get mad get even. We are pursuing a serious complaint against the health authority. I have already had admission of error and a sorry verbally from the consultant surgeon. How long that will take to translate into something in writing time will tell. There have been similar cases at the same hospital in the recent past. It is high time somebody took a stand.

For myself I certainly do not feel guilty there is a limit to what one person can do v. the behemoths of the Care Services and the NHS. After a minor fall two years ago the Care Service insisted on providing a bunch of free standing supports and a trolley with no brakes. The immediate cause of injury was losing balance, grabbing the trolley which sped away pulling her over. I still have the letter threatening me with "abuse" if I took the trolley away again ( leaving one with brakes in its stead ).

It's a mad world. Sadly I already know that the loss of close friends and rellies never heals you just learn to get by all the same sailing with a jury rig.

The PM verdict as recorded on the death cert rests on the final cause of death. I am due to pick it up on Monday. I have no idea whether I shall be able to obtain the report itself easily or not.

Its your life, not the Company's, and you've said that you have passed the UK retirement age. What does your wife think? Would she be happy to have you under her feet for most of the day????

You might find that they'd rehire you as a Consultant on a part time basis, making it easier for you to wind down. If they don't, there's probably other companies who would headhunt you in a second.

Explore the practical aspects. If you were to accept the posting to Germany, would it be feasible to commute weekly to your French home? Don't ignore budget airlines into regional airports.

If you don't have to make a decision until 2019, start saving like mad. :-D

The trouble I have found in situations involving NHS and Care Homes eg is that you are swept up into what is going on at a time of urgency when you feel tense, worried and dependant on others, who you expect to be following correct procedures and doing what is in the best interest of their patients. Sadly this doesn't always happen and family and friends are left with the burden of hindsight and wondering if they could have done more. (not meaning you personally, but it is the way I have felt at times)

I think you can get a copy of the coroner's report as I know my mother got one after my father died in a road accident, but you need to ask for it and expect a wait.

I'm glad you are pursuing a complaint as so many don't and just don't have the wherewithall after a stressful, traumatic time. It is the only way to hopefully improve things for others in the future.

At least you can start to make some arrangements now to celebrate your mother's life in the way she would like.

As you are almost my age, so the passage of time would be roughly the same, I would hate to have to rely on my 'O' level French for any job!! It's expecting a lot isn't it for someone to 'soon pick it up' after so many years, unless you were regularly using it in the interim years.

Rollo, there is still so much for you to think about. Focus on the happiness that your Mum brought to all of your family and arrange the celebration of her life in true style.

Thinking of you and Mrs R right now, do try to relax a little if you have the chance.

My mother was also my tenant ... she was never in a Care Home as she had a deep seated horror of the places. A couple of years ago after a fall she was persauded by a family member to try one out for a month. After a fortnight she escaped by taxi and went home. Not her thing at all.

The death cert formailities were only completed today with a release to the undertakers tomorrow. The cremation will be well into next week given the distances some people are coming. I will be very pleased to see a lot of my east midland rellies and I am sure my mum will be well remembered with everybody's favorite anecdotes.

In the cold light of dawn I am not much minded to let it go when there has been a serious failure of both "the system" and some individuals. I I have ordered the full pm report which will be passed onto specialists. The case has been accepted by an NHS enquiry team and won't cost me a cent though that is hardly the issue. If people accept gross underfunding and all the bad outcomes it causes under the aegis of "don't make a fuss get on with it" then the sad unevitable fact is that it will (and is) happening again and again.

My OH is at work. Senior cat is passing away at my feet he may not see tomorrow's sunrise. He enjoyed the summer promised to him :-) Maybe he will hang on a bit he is a tough guy but he has stopped eating, just drinks evian water.

So much fun we had together.

My OH mother was Jewish. All of her family died as part of the final solution. She survived, protected by a Catholic family in Montparnase, but the injuries she suffered resulted in an early death in 1980. OH would not live in Germany no matter what. Frankfurt is easy to fly to people ping pong all the time. Berlin is a bit far for a day return and a day's work. Rents are much cheaper than Frankfurt and the city itself is returning to the cultural kaleidoscope it was back in the 1930s.

Our house though is in France and I am too old to spend half my time trying to work on planes and trains. Time will tell I guess but right now I need the money!

best regards to you all, thanks to encouragement I have hesitantly come out of the cave where I had gone to hide. Only at night so far.


take care

A relief for you that things are moving forward.

Even taking into consideration the needs of the attendees, its not that unusual for a funeral to take place 10 days after the DC as been issued.

Try and recall anything your mother may have said about funerals, both the positive and negative of the ones she had attended. Although the Life Celebration and ceremony are for the benefit of the living, its a good idea to base them on what she would have liked.
Flowers? No flowers?
Colourful clothing, accents of a favourite colour or sombre black?
You get the drift :-)