It was late October, 2004. The phone rang about 15:00. I had the day off from my call center job. I was sitting in my skivvies at my computer, drinking beer and reading the news.
Ma had been in care since the Spring of 1998. She’d been a teacher all her life, and her monthly income was about 850 pounds (UKL). She had 16,000 pounds net worth including whatever was left of my father’s savings. She enjoyed robust good health 1981-1998, but then she got a UTI, the drugs for which upset her stomach, and she started living on just tea and biscuits.
Getting weak, she started to fall down a lot, and every time she’d fetch up in the hospital she’d go completely nuts. And I do mean psychotic. Later, a social worker told me she’d been self-medicating with uppers and downers including Valium. She had been getting prescriptions from four different doctors. It did not seem that surprising to me that whenever she was cut off she’d go crazy. They call that “dementia”.
When Ma went into managed care in 1998 her income went up by 60% due to all the subsidies she was now eligible to receive. Hertfordshire Social Services didn’t touch her savings, but if she had owned a house she would have lost it.
Fast forward to 2004. The doctor came on the line from the hospital in Hemel Hempstead.
“If your mother goes into cardiac arrest, what should we do?”
“Well, she’s been a regular customer of yours for the last six years and she’s always telling people that she doesn’t want to live any longer. I think we should just let her go”.
That was the end of that.