Bumping along ...

True of both my mother and me! I have managed to do a little (far too little) study. A new textbook arrived this week which looks very interesting, but I must confess to having been rather relieved to find it was only loosely related to the topic I am working at: it can wait for perusal when I've more coursework under my belt. For the moment I am revising what I did earlier as I have become rather disconnected from it, and then I have another bit of reading which should wrap up the current topic, and I hope, at last get my brain into gear for the assignment.

Spoke to my sister yesterday: she was more than a little annoyed that, yet again, the doctor had been to visit my mother when she was not there. Even though the doctor had asked her to ring, the receptionist was obstructive about putting her through. One can understand filtering to a certain degree (not all on the books have been brought up, as we were, only to get the doctor when necessary: some seem to think a headache on the morning after the night before is worthy of medical attention .... ) but the result was that my sister arrived AFTER the doctor. When will the NHS realise that its patients also have busy lives and tight deadlines?

Fiona said that my mother was back to her old tricks as regards eating: making a meal of tiny portions. How can one get her to relax?? I suspect inability to do so is at the root of everything. She goes downhill if Fiona is out of reach, and Fiona needs a break: she said she was herself feeling very weary, and I am not surprised. She is dealing single-handedly with a teenage son doing exams and a frail old lady for whose well-being she has to keep constant watch and be ready to intervene.

However long my mother lives, she would not now be alive if my sister had not been to visit every day the last time she was in hospital: she would have been one more added to the statistics of those who die of starvation in hospital. What sense does it make to dump a tray of food out of reach of someone who is, anyway, too weak to eat unaided?? One fellow-student who works as a care assistant said they were told that to feed someone was an infringement of their human rights!! (That Act has been a pernicious nuisance: the interpretation of it has no respect for morality or humanity and it is constantly misused to wicked ends.) So it is NOT 'an infringement of Human Rights' to allow someone to starve to death?? My understanding of that Declaration is that it was made in response to the terrible abuses perpetrated by the Nazis: now it is used to starve the infirm to death - precisely one of those abuses. I gave my mother a stern talking to, to the effect that she was not a useless old woman because she could no longer do: she maybe had reached the time when she needed just to be. It is not for her to say if she is useful or not: she has given to various people over the years (foreign students, young and old) so she should not be ashamed to receive now that it is her turn.