The Madwoman in the Attic
Feb. 8th, 2009 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
henry_the_cowMrs. HTC's Mum has been seriously ill for the last couple of years. This started with acute anxiety (sufficient to require a stay in hospital) and has progressively worsened since then, becoming somewhat confused as well. Although her moods and acuity vary, she basically needs full-time care. She's had all sorts of treatments; I don't want to go into details but they generally trade-off a degree of calming against levels of mental alertness. There seems no sign of a cure.
I haven't blogged about this before because I don't want to record the details of someone else's problems. I'm not going to record a month-by-month account of her illness. But of course it has affected the family considerably, both in the direct emotional challenge of coming to terms with the illness, to the organisational hassles of working out what sort of care, of that which is available, would be best.
Emotionally, I guess the situation is a bit like losing someone you love, but seeing them still half-present, a fleshly ghost of a lost personality. As well as this, it's a loss of the stability and constancy that (for most of us) is how we view our parents as we grew up ourselves. And of course it is a foreshadowing of our own fate.
On the organisational side, it has not been clear what sort of care is required, which homes can give that care and how much, if anything, the NHS in England can provide. This hasn't been easy and it's still far from resolution.
In victorian times, or at least in victorian novels, such an illness would have been a family secret. These days we're more open about the problem and we have at least some care available, but we're not much nearer a cure.
I haven't blogged about this before because I don't want to record the details of someone else's problems. I'm not going to record a month-by-month account of her illness. But of course it has affected the family considerably, both in the direct emotional challenge of coming to terms with the illness, to the organisational hassles of working out what sort of care, of that which is available, would be best.
Emotionally, I guess the situation is a bit like losing someone you love, but seeing them still half-present, a fleshly ghost of a lost personality. As well as this, it's a loss of the stability and constancy that (for most of us) is how we view our parents as we grew up ourselves. And of course it is a foreshadowing of our own fate.
On the organisational side, it has not been clear what sort of care is required, which homes can give that care and how much, if anything, the NHS in England can provide. This hasn't been easy and it's still far from resolution.
In victorian times, or at least in victorian novels, such an illness would have been a family secret. These days we're more open about the problem and we have at least some care available, but we're not much nearer a cure.
