The Story Of Mum

The story of my mother, now over 85 years long, has had some major plot turns recently and I thought it was time I shared some of them here.
First, a potted early history of, say, the first 80 of those years.
She was born in Clapham, London SW8, in 1924, second and last child in her family. Leaving school at 14, she took a job in the office of a local company that made precision optical lenses for cameras, telescopes and the like.
My father, recently returned with his mother from Italy, where he grew up, also worked there and they struck up some sort of friendship. This was 1938. War broke out in 1939. My father turned 18 in 1940, was called up for military service and was consequently absent for most of the next 5 years, ending up as one of a small group of a sort of informal POWs being marched around Greece by a lost platoon of german infantry.
On his return, he must have resumed his friendship with my mother because, in 1951, they married.
The following year, they bought a small house in Mitcham (then Surrey, now the London Borough Of Merton) and I popped out.
I grew up in that small house, my father died there in 1992 and my mother continued to live there until the events of 2004 overtook her.
Her parents were both dead by the early 1980s; her brother pre-deceased my father by a few months and his wife followed shortly thereafter. Her only relatives by this time were, therefore, me - by then 3000 miles away in Ontario and visiting once a year at best, and a recently married nephew with a small son. He lived a few miles away and visited from time to time but her most frequent visitor was my first wife who lived not far away and called in when able.
On one such occasiion, early in '04, she found my mother's state quite severely worsened. There were milk bottles, mostly opened and half consumed, all over the place. Her recently deceased, geriatric and oft-times incontinent cat could still be strongly smelled in the house. Her legs were full of ulcers; her hair long, lank and unwashed. She was, in short, going downhill fast.
We arranged to go over and see her as fast as we could and were horrified by the state of her and the house. My wife, youngest daughter "M" (qv) and I spent three weeks there and, in the end, brought her back to Ontario with us. We'd cleared out the house, sold it, packed up the salvage-worthy items and just "did" it. Sort out the details afterwards; no option.
We brought her to Canada as a visitor, 6 month visa, 6 months health insurance, and started immigration paperwork. Our family doctor went to work on her medical conditions, my wife, quitting work to look after her, went to work on her general well-being and we all went to work on adapting to a new reality.
Immigration, we were told by the lawyers, would take 18 months to 2 years so we would need to apply for an extended visitor permit so Mum could stay with us while we waited out the process. We did, and got it.
That Christmas, though, the world was shaken - quite literally - by the Tsunami in the Pacific that destroyed large chunks of the Philippines, Thailand and elsewhere. The Canadian government was urged to "do something" about the resulting refugee problem. It's name for what it did was "fast-tracking"; a process whereby those who fit the criteria effectively jump the queue and government resources are diverted to processing them. I make no complaint about that, they DID have to do something. I only resent lack of information given everone else and, particularly, the euphemism "fast tracking".
The guys who pushed in front of us while we were lining up in costume in the rain to get into the Shore Club Halloween party last Saturday were "fast-tracking" in exactly the same way but with much less justification and much milder consequences. Let's call queue jumping, officially sanctioned or not, justified or not, just that; QUEUE JUMPING". To call it "fast-tracking" is to tell only half the story. The other half is the bit my mother and whole family were stuck in; that's what we should call SLOW-TRACKING, I suppose, but you never hear that. Well, gradually, 18-24 months became 2-3 years. It's now over FIVE years, and we're still waiting, though I sincerely hope there are no Filipino families still sleeping on the beach waiting to be fast-tracked.
Meanwhile, we realised a few things in a rather unfortunate order.
First, our living arrangements were inadequate; too many stairs, not enough space - particularly for the girls, two of whom were at home full-time and being squeezed.
We moved. Found a huge bungalow with ample room for everybody on the main level but a full basement with a small apartment in it where the girls could get some privacy.
Would've been great, except for two things:-
1. It was a money pit. We were lied to. There's no getting away from that. The previous owner KNEW there were issues with the weeping tiles, at the very least but, long story short (for once!) this and all the other issues became our problem.
2. When the second 6 months' worth of health insurance ran out, we were told that, not only could we not renew it but, we should never have been sold the LAST one. The man who had sold it to us was "no longer with the company" (a euphemism I think we all understand) and, had we tried to claim on it, we would have been refused. The only way to get more insurance was for Mum to leave the country and re-enter as a "new" visitor. That way, she would qualify for travel insurance - good for another 6 months and, supposedly, the process could be repeated.
Oughta work, right? Nope. The extended visa that the government gives in these cases SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITS leaving the country and coming back in. It's a crime! Hmmmm, you'd almost think they knew, wooncha?
So we now had a very difficult situation in a number of ways. First, we had an 80 year old woman with no health insurance. One operation and we all go broke!
Now, of course, in 2009, we know that the solution to this is to move to the USA and join the Republican Party who have miraculously managed to work it so that millions of people living in fear of illness or injury that they can't pay for is a GOOD thing, representing "choice", "freedom" and "The American Way" while anyone trying to get "Big Insurance"* off the gravy train called "Health Insurance" (another one-side-only euphemism) like it is in any civilized country (as different from one that is merely "free" as in "free-to-get-shot", "free-to-die-on-the-hospital-steps, "free-to-vote-for-either-of-two-multimillionaires-as-long-as-I-don't-need-the-vote-counted) must be a "Socialist" which, as we know, is only one small step better than being a terrorist!
Having checked with the immigration lawyers that there was no sign of any useful progress and that relocating Mum back to the UK would not jeopardize the process (really, how could get any worse than completely stagnated, but we were understandably paranoid by this time), we set about fiding her somewhere to live.
I have to add at this point that my mother, while moody and erratic, still had most of her marbles at this stage. She knew what was going on and, although she didn't understand all of it (hell, WE didn't!), or like the bits she did understand, she did contribute to all these decisions. She was, in fact, much better, physically and mentally, than when we first brought her over.
My wife, always something of a "Google Wizard" started researching "Care Homes", refering to me on points of geography, what areas were like etc. but generally running with the project of finding Mum a nice place to live. She succeeded.
Early in 2006, 18 months after Mum came to Canada, we took her back. Disillusioned, upset and angry, we went to Dorking, Surrey. Mum's new home was to be (and was, for the next 3 and a half years), Nower Care, a small (55 residents when full) Care Home in two old houses, nicely refurbished and joined by a modern annex. She was happy there most of the time although, towards the end of her stay, it's hard to imagine her liking anything much. If any of you chance upon this epistle, Nower Care people, thank you. I've thanked you already but, here, I do it more publicly (well, a BIT more).
At the age of 84, while still at Nower, Mum developped breast cancer! Supposed to be to old for it. Should've picked a more age-appropriate illness. Got it, got treated, got a bit sore for a while, got fixed. No problem (so far, but that was 2 years ago) but it does highlight the wisdom of the decision we made in 2006 to take her back to the UK. I don't know what a foreign national with no insurance would have to pay to be treated for breast cancer in Ontario but I'm betting the number has lots of zeros on the end.
Fast forward to 2009.
Suddenly, Mum wants to take the stairs down to meals instead of the lift. She doesn't remember whether she's had visitors this week, what she had for lunch. Then, she falls. The doctor comes by, does some tests and discovers that, apart from the obvious, but not dangerous, injuries from the fall, she has other problems. Kidney function, liver function, cognitive ability, all severly impaired. Hospital. Tests.
For bout 12 weeks, I would phone the hospital to be told by a nurse that she was "comfortable" (find a new word please, ladies, it gets dull), that they were still waiting for test results, etc. When I could get a doctor, he told of concerns over liver function, urinary tract infections and unwillingness to co-operate with attempts to get her mobile again.
Eventually, "they" (they refer to themselves as the "care team") decided that a) there was no clinical reason to keep Mum in hospital any more and b) she couldn't go back to Nower because she wasn't mobile enough (which means "at all") so she would be assigned a Social Services Case Worker who would contact me to arrange and choose a nursing home.
The "Discharge Co-Ordinator" whose job it is to free up the hospital bed said this could all be done in two weeks. That was optimistic and probably driven more by budget-myopia (one main symptom being the inabilty to see anything that prevents others from doing what YOUR budget says they should do) than anything else but I have to say that things did move fairly quickly after that - about 5 weeks, I think it was. Once again, thanks are due to all involved in that process - if you stumble here you will know who you are and you all helped along a potentially nasty process (Special nod to "Sue", a League Of Friends volunteer at the information desk at the East Surrey Hospital)
We went over again. We moved her again. Less stuff, a LOT less marbles - three days after we left her, I wasn't sure she knew we'd even been, or even who we were - but, again, a nice place, still in Dorking, with a view of the Downs from her window. She's still immobile - being ably hoisted from chair to chair to bath to bed to chair by a procession of ever-smiling nurses, has consistently said she likes the food (although she often says she prepared it herself), still wonders why I'm (whoever the "I" refers to) playing football "outside" - something I've always done too much of, it seems. People who know me will tell you how funny that is - trust me, just laugh!
Immigration Canada are still doing whatever it is they do - 5.5 years on. The probably marginal 80 year old "Family Class" applicant whose file first landed in an in-tray late in 2004 is now a nowhere-near-marginal 85 year old applicant. If I told them, they'd just throw her application right out (probably only take a couple of years) but I'm inclined not to do that. Let's just see how long this takes; what the answer is. It's all paid for now anyway. Hell, they ignored us for long enough - boot's on the other foot now. Do government types realise how damaging stuff like this is? In my early years in Canada I had swallowed the CBC standard description of Canada and its government as caring, fair, a bit wacky sometimes, certainly slow, perhaps a bit dull (but hey, look who lives next door) but basically harmless. Now, I see it (the government) as arrogant, evasive, tricky, incompetent and to be avoided at all costs. You did that, Immigration Department, by doing nothing, very slowly. I would have felt much better about them (and, frankly, not too surprised) if they'd just laughed in our faces right at the beginning. "You want to bring WHO?" We could've saved my mother and ourselves a lot of grief, saved her, us and (ironically) the government a lot of money (because all the money they would have been able to tax has now been spent on very expensive care in a foreign country and NONE of us will ever see it again) and devoted all of our resources to something else, like the twilight years of my Mum's life, maybe.
* How come it's "Big Tobacco", "Big Oil" etc. but not "Big Insurance", the biggest leeches yet invented - but wait!