Life can be so cruel at times and put you under such stress you think you will never be able to cope.
I have Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis, and am in constant pain and now have very reduced mobility. I have always blamed stress for my MS but like most with it stress makes it so much worse.
My Mum used to live in sheltered accommodation in Wales and all was ok until my Dad and aunt died within 3 days of each other. My aunt had been Mum's main support, saw her or spoke to her every day. Dad had been in a home for 11yrs, so wasn't such a blow but they had been together nearly 60yrs.
Mum started to go downhill health wise from then, first she was really depressed then she retreated further into her shell. She has always been shy and introverted, finding it difficult to talk to people she didn't know. Things where she lived also changed not for the better. Also my MS was making it difficult to visit her every week as we had been doing for years.
The decision was made she would like to move nearer to us. So I got the wheels in motion, I could do that sitting in my chair so was fairly easy. We had also noticed her memory was getting bad but didn't think things were too bad, we just accepted that she could no longer work out how to use things anymore, so wrote instructions down.
She was adamant that she would pack up her flat, but thankfully another aunt and uncle stepped in. We organised all that we could from this end and down she came full of what she was going to do.
She arrived and the seemed to just give up. She sat in the chair and didn't want to do or join in with anything. The manager of the home and I tried everything we could think of to try and get her to mix with others. Eventually we got a social worker involved. He thought I was just trying to dump her at first. After a year of banging our heads against the wall it was decided that she should go into full time care for respite. What a relief that was we no longer were getting begging phone calls all hours of the day and night.
She seemed to settle and started to talk to others and eat which she had stopped doing. It was decided that she should stay in care.
Then after a couple of months she was admitted to hospital her chest was really bad and I had had to speak with the doctor about the amount of antibiotics she had been given. She was not expected to make it through the night. So difficult phoning all the family.
But she did make it and came back home. Then we get a call asking about her last wishes. Yet she still hung on. Last night, about a month after she got home we had a call from the home saying she's now losing blood and that they thought she wouldn't make the night.
Yet here we are with no call during the night.
It is so difficult just waiting for a phone call, wishing for her sake she could just slip off in her sleep. You are constantly just waiting for the phone to ring so can never really relax.