Hi my name is Rachel & I’ve been an unpaid carer for just over a year.
I had been living in Australia for 11 years when I was told by my mother’s Primary Care Practitioner that mum had suffered Cognitive Impairment from a stroke in 2011. She suggested that if mum’s memory was stimulated & her life was simplified, then her memory could be improved. I decided that I would move back to the UK for a while, de-clutter mum’s house, set her up with some memory
classes & tools & try to help to simplify her life. I had been back in Australia a month after a stay with mum in September 2014 when I discovered via an email from mum’s Care Practitioner that mum had in fact been diagnosed with Vascular Dementia & Alzheimer’s disease 3 months previously but nobody had told anyone but mum, who of course forgot. I realised that a short term stay was no longer an option & started to close down my life in Australia & sell my belongings.
I returned to the UK on 20th Feb 2015 to quickly discover that mum wasn’t coping at all. She had broken her wrist in a fall, was missing appointments, could no longer follow a recipe to cook and was forgetting to eat and the house was filling up with repetitive items & an abundance of junk mail as she could no longer tell what was important mail & what was rubbish. Within a couple of weeks I realised that I wasn’t going to be in a position to work. Mum was already with 8 departments at Treliske Hospital (so appointments there were almost daily) & I needed to get her to Memory Cafes & things to stimulate her memory and run the house and finances in all areas. I also realised that finding myself somewhere to live was not an option either, I needed to remain living with her.
I spent the next 6 weeks dealing with mum’s appointments with the different departments at Treliske hospital soon increasing to 12, and me trying to get information and help and support for us both. We had disasters with the Department of Work and Pensions & the council trying to secure income etc. Everything just kept going from bad to worse.
By the time I was visited by a carer support worker, (about 6-8 weeks in) I was a mess. Lucky for us, she was amazing. Thanks to her, slowly each of the support people I needed and interviews for benefits for mum started to happen. I was swamped in forms to fill in (which my support worker was always available to help me with) and so many interviews at the house that I could hardly fit it all around mum’s appointments which were now 3-4 a day. I also couldn’t talk about caring for mum without breaking down in tears. She was then diagnosed with cancer of the breast which was really confusing for her. It was all so confronting which the nature of her disease & the stress of having no idea what I was doing, no support, no money, no carer’s training and I knew, I discovered, absolutely NOTHING about dementia!