Should the Elderly Downsize?

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Downsizing

A while ago,  David Halpern from the Behavioural Insights Team talked of the under-occupation of houses and the desirability of pensioners returning to work to combat loneliness and early mortality.  The Saga (over 50s) group replied that it was outrageous social engineering  for the Government to suggest that older people don’t deserve to live in their own homes.

I suppose what the Government would prefer would be for all people living alone in what used to be their family home before their partner died and the kids moved out, to move into a one-bedroomed property and give up their home to a family, thus doing their bit for the housing crisis.

Before he died, it was suggested to my uncle by his daughters that he might benefit from downsizing to a little retirement flat near to them.  Both his daughters had been born in the 3-bedroomed house where he had lived with my aunt for 52 years.  My aunt had died 5 years’ previously, but my uncle hadn’t wanted to remove any of her clothes or other personal belongings. Every time we went there her paints and canvasses were still laid out on the table where she had left them.  Her clothes still hung in her wardrobe, but the house had a bleak feel to it.  Uncle Stan sat in his armchair, depressed and lonely and refused to move out of the house which held so many memories for him and where he had raised his family.  Within 18 months of her death he had changed from a sociable, outgoing man into a thin shadow of himself, barely eating and wracked with Alzheimer’s disease.  His daughters did what they could, but both worked and did not live near to him.

Would the Alzheimer’s have taken hold so soon if he’d been ensconced in a retirement complex where he saw the warden and other residents every day?  His daughters could have visited more often too.  However, Uncle  Stan did not want to move from the home he had lived in for over half a century.

I can sympathise with both sides of the story.  Elderly people do not like change, especially having to uproot and leave all that is familiar – and why should they?  Stan had worked all his life to pay his mortgage and provide for his family – why should he have to leave the house he loved just because his daughters wanted him to?  He was in his home, where he felt safe and comfortable.  Reminders of Aunt June were all around him, and indeed, there he stayed until his death in  February 2017, lonely and just existing until the Grim Reaper came to take him away.  He eschewed carers, and it was left to neighbours to pop in with meals on the days his daughters were not able to visit.

On the other hand, in a little retirement flat he could have had more visitors, and the warden might have even persuaded him to receive Meals-on-Wheels.  Who knows – he might have lived longer and maybe even staved off Alzheimer’s disease.  However, would he have been any happier, after being removed from all that he knew?

It’s a tricky one.  My grandmother was forcefully uprooted at the age of 70 as her East End house was due to be demolished.  She cried for a year, but eventually got used to her new one-bedroomed council flat.  My mother Dot had 3 house moves in her final 10 years, but as I was nearby for all of them and could visit every day, it didn’t hit her as hard.

There’s no hard and fast answer to this one.  I thought how I would feel if I’d lived in a house for over 50 years and then somebody asked me to move.  Would I move if I was mobile enough and in my right mind?  Hell no!  If I was not so mobile I probably would agree to carers and Meals-on-Wheels though, if of course there are going to be any left after council cutbacks.  If not, then disability might force me to buy a retirement flat, but I certainly wouldn’t be too happy about living in a pygmy home barely big enough to swing the proverbial cat.

What about you?  Would you downsize if you were elderly and the only person left in your family home?

 

 

 

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My Take on Old Age

This excellent post by Janet Givens asks ‘What does old age really mean?’.  As somebody speaking from the experience of being in the 60th year of my life and also caring for my 92 year old mother in the last few years before her death, I have a pretty good idea.  Here’s my list of what old age means:

1.  It means you will fight until the last moment possible to hang on to your independence instead of going into residential care.
2. You will need to accept your body’s limitations, or face years of depression.
3. You will drive your car until the last possible moment before the family take away your car keys because you have started to become a hazard to other road users.
4. You will constantly look back to a time when you were younger and life was better.
5. Friends that you’ve known all your life will all die, one by one, so somehow, somewhere, you will need to make new ones or face years of loneliness.
6. You cannot help but think that you are a burden to your family.
7. Bodily functions you took for granted will cease to work properly, and you will need to make ‘adjustments’.
8. Mobility will decrease for sure.  The legs always go first.
9. It will be harder to remember anything or learn anything new.
10. You will get to know your GP and ambulance staff quite well.
11. You will feel cold all the time.
12. You will find it hard to do up buttons.
13. You will become clumsy and prone to falling over.
14. You will need to use a walking stick, maybe two.
15. You will resist until the last moment the necessity of using a mobility walker.
16. On outings with your family you will eschew the use of a wheelchair and walk along pushing it at a snail’s pace.
17. You will wake up several times during the day, but do not remember falling asleep.
18. It will get harder and harder for you to hear what is being said, but you will resist until the last moment the necessity of using a hearing aid.

Depressing isn’t it?  So I say this… live life  to the full while you can and while you’ve still got the wherewithal to do so!

 

At what age are you an OAP?

We had some family and friends round at the weekend for a barbeque to celebrate Sam’s 60th birthday.  There were lots of jokes about becoming an old age pensioner, to which Sam took all in good part.  However, one of the jokes about Sam being able to claim a free bus pass caused me to check on Google, as I was sure that somebody in Government had recently moved the goalposts.

They had.  Apparently all men and women could have claimed a free bus pass at the state retirement age of 60 if they had been born before 5th April 1950.  Now the old retirement age is being phased out, and they can only claim a free bus pass at 60 years of age if they live in London, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.  Unfortunately for the rest of us born after this date who don’t happen to live in the above locations,  we have to wait until we’re 66!  Hmm… the phrase ‘It’s not fair!’ springs to mind.

What happens when I get to 66?  Would the goalposts have been moved again?  Perhaps in the future people will have to wait until they’re 70 or even 75?  By then their mobility might be sorely compromised and they may not even be able to climb on board a bus!

What happens in other countries regarding claiming a bus pass?  I’d be interested to read your comments.  Sam, positive as ever, says at least he won’t be an OAP for another 6 years, therefore he’s still ‘young (ish)’.  He works at home with the aid of his trusty Internet and Skype as tech support for an American company where there’s no set retirement age, and he intends to carry on working for as long as he’s able to.  I took early retirement due to the amount of treatment I needed and to look after Dot,  but 3 years later I feel better and so I’m back again working in the NHS covering for short-staffing, holidays and staff sick leave.  I can also work for as long as I want.  One secretary was 75 before she stopped working!

I’m working tomorrow; back on Wednesday. x

 

The Lark & Owl Syndrome

We’ve recently returned from a week at our holiday home on the Isle of Wight.  This time we were joined by Sam’s sister Vicky and her husband Jim.  We hadn’t been on holiday with them for quite a while, possibly twenty years or more.  They arrived in their motorhome, and all was set for a pleasant week.

Twenty years ago all our children were small and were up at the crack of dawn.  Sam and I still wake up early every day and also on holiday, and so like to get out and about visiting by half past nine.  However, it appeared that Vicky and Jim liked to lie in bed and didn’t want to meet up in the mornings until eleven o’clock.  This was all very well for Vicky and Jim, but it meant that Sam and I had to hang around for at least two hours waiting for them.  Nevertheless, we were able to get the decking cleaned and a long walk along the beach done every morning before eleven o’clock.

By the time we had decided where to visit and had actually arrived there, Sam and I were hungry for lunch.  Vicky and Jim had only woken up a couple of hours before, and had not long eaten breakfast.  Sam and I tried to be accommodating and delayed our lunch for 2 hours on the first day, but it’s difficult to enjoy visiting somewhere if your stomach is screaming to eat!  Likewise in the evenings we prefer to eat early between 5 – 6pm, but Vicky and Jim do not eat dinner until at least 8 o’clock.

In order to stay together as a foursome and to not spend the entire holiday going our separate ways, Sam and I gave in and tried to tune our bodies to those of Vicky and Jim.  The entire process gave us indigestion, especially at night, and made us somewhat irritable.

We came to the conclusion that it’s very awkward going on holiday with people whose body clocks are 3 hours behind your own.  Vicky and Jim are night owls and stay up late watching TV, but we are yawning and blowing out the zzzzz’s by 10.30pm.  Twenty years ago we were all up early to see to the children, but Sam and I are still early morning people, raring to go and breakfasted by 07:30!

On the last day I wanted to see the costumes at Osborne House that had been used in the new film ‘Victoria & Abdul’, which is released next week.  Sam likes to look around the house too.  It’s always good to get to Osborne early before the masses arrive, and so we made our excuses and were knocking on the door at the opening time of 10am while Vicky and Jim were still in their PJ’s eating breakfast.

It must be worse if one half of a couple is up with the lark and the other half doesn’t ‘do’ mornings.  At least Sam and I are both ‘morning’ people and hate lying about in bed.  The sun shining through the curtains beckons us outside to do something productive.  Of course we can’t all be the same and it would be a sad world if we were, but next time we visit the Isle of Wight it’s definitely going to be just the two of us!

Back at work tomorrow. See you Wednesday.

Happy Campers?

An incident occurred while we were away on the Isle of  Wight recently that brought home to me the British stoicism in the face of adversity.

One night at the weekend we had the mother of all storms raging for a good few hours. The rain was torrential, and the wind screamed and whistled and brought down a blanket of leaves and twigs onto the decking.  We heard on the news the following morning that there had been over 500 flashes of lightning during the night.  Our holiday home was thankfully spared though, as it seems quite sturdily built with an added bonus of double glazing and central heating.

A little way away down towards the beach was a field of colourful tents containing perhaps about 200 campers.  The field had been full when we had walked through it the previous day, and Sam and I both wondered how they had all fared during the storm.  The next day when we took our usual morning walk down to the beach, the field was a tad waterlogged, but children were running about, barbeques were smoking, and families were sitting under blankets chatting and laughing, no doubt sharing events of the previous night.  There did not appear to be any spaces where a family had perhaps given up and gone back home.

I must admit that if I had been in a tent I would have sought out a hotel room.  Sam and I have camped with our boys at the Download music festival in similar bad weather, and remember the mud with its consistency of gravy, the bone-aching cold, and the inability to find any dry clothing.  Plus a nasty effect from the lack of a memory foam mattress on ageing hips, and the noise of other people shouting “Oggy oggy oggy, oi oi oi!”  well into the small hours. Never again!

Perhaps it’s because we’re older now and the families were all younger than us.  I think nearly 60 year olds perhaps need a little bit of comfort!  Would you have gone home or braved the weather and stayed in your tent?  I know what I would have done…

Tasty?

The new Stevie seems to be nearly a stone lighter.  I’m feeling a lot better since my radiotherapy treatment finished 2 weeks ago, but the weight is still staying off.  Anything sweet tastes like radiation (yes, you can taste it, believe me) and I find I’m repulsed by the sight of cakes, biscuits, or anything full of sugar.  Even fruit I haven’t been able to eat, as it also tastes strange, and burns my mouth and the inside of my throat.

I suppose it’s not a bad thing, but I did enjoy a nice piece of fruit cake before the treatment began.  I still buy it, but Sam ends up eating it.  He’s putting on weight, and has had to start visiting the gym again.  All my trousers are a little too baggy now, and I’ve had to invest in a belt.  I’m wolfing down snacks of hummus and crackers, sausage rolls or toast in-between meals, as my appetite has returned with a vengeance.  However, my taste buds have not.

I can’t get used to my flat stomach!  I’ve lost 3 inches off my waist and keep waiting for the old Stevie shape to re-appear, but the scales stay fixed at 9 stones.  My knees have never felt better though, and are thanking me for losing ten pounds of flab.  What a way to lose it though.

I’m a bit sad to have lost my taste for fruit cake and the lovely summer fruits that are in the supermarkets now.  I only hope that with time my taste buds come alive again and allow me to partake of just a little bit of lemon drizzle cake or sultana loaf.  Is life worth living without a slice of genoa cake?  I suppose it is, but I’ll just have to get used to ‘The new normal’ (usually abbreviated to ‘The new norm’), a favourite phrase of the clinical nurse specialists in the department where I used to work.  Now I understand what they were going on about.

Due to a sinus problem my late aunt had not been able to taste a thing for years.  She would always cook a roast dinner on Sundays, eat every scrap, and exclaim – ‘That was a lovely dinner!’.  Poor old June.  At least I’ve got some sort of sense of taste, albeit a severely mutilated one.

The Crozier Estate

My teenage years were spent living miserably in an 8th floor flat on an infamous London council estate, which many years later I found out was at one point home to the ‘Shoe Bomber’ too.  I’ve changed the name of it (just in case!) in the poem below.  It’s all true by the way, but the photo underneath is just one I saw on the Free Photos site showing a similar block of flats:

 

In nineteen hundred and seventy one
The Crozier Estate had just begun.
Four thousand souls in the September heat
Made themselves at home amongst the London concrete.

Flats, maisonettes, and houses galore,
Had risen up from an airfield's floor.
Grey breeze blocks had been cobbled together
To give the people a happy ever after.

For eight long years I stayed there with my dad and mum
Until my day of freedom could come.
When I could leave the place where few trees grew,
And where the council had slowly let
All the eggs sink in one rotten basket.

When the original tenants did move or die,
With relish arrived the work-shy.
Over the sound of the TV at night,
Police outside would break up yet another fight.

Ambulances were two a penny
In the days when there were many.
A&E doctors came to dread the state
Of the inhabitants of the Crozier Estate.

In nineteen hundred and ninety four,
My mum, now a widow, heard a kick at her door.
It wasn't the first time, and she knew for sure
That she must move to where we were.

The estate had sunk to a new level of low,
Mildewed, decaying, unloved, and so...
We took my mum on a little ride
And moved her out to the countryside.
She hated it, this new place of hers,
And took the piss out of the villagers.

In two thousand and ten the bulldozers came round
And razed the estate down to the ground.
But like a phoenix it rose again without a hitch,
And is now a billion pound 'des res' for the rich!

Doing a Car Boot

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car boot, humour

My US friends might ask “What’s doing a car boot?”

Well, it’s where you pack the boot of your car on a Saturday night with as much tat as you can find, and then set your alarm to go off at 05:10 hrs on the following Sunday morning in order to stand in a cold, muddy field from 07:30 hrs with about fifty other like minded souls in order to sell said tat.   The bit about setting your alarm for 05:10 hrs isn’t funny, as I came to realise last Sunday.

My daughters-in-law are prolific car booters.  I’ve never discovered just why my eldest daughter-in-law always has so much tat to sell.  Where is it all coming from?  She usually makes quite a bit of money every time too.  After finally clearing out my mother’s flat and being left with a mountain of tat, she suggested adding Dot’s tat to my own tat and joining her for a car booting session, and she knew just the one to go to – the Sunday market at Woolpit.

Woolpit Sunday market has been going for years, certainly for as long as we’ve lived in Suffolk.  The tat stretches far and wide across the aforesaid muddy field every Sunday morning, and if it’s a nice day then vultures start arriving from 07:00 hrs in order to buy up the best tat before somebody else takes it.  Sam and I had so much tat that we had to pay £14 for two cars to enter the field.  I fervently hoped that we’d soon sell all of it and make a grand profit.

The weather was a bit cold and overcast, but otherwise dry.  I trundled my car across the field and parked next to Sam and Kelly’s cars.  Before we had turned off our engines the vultures were flapping around all three of our cars, shouting through the windows and asking what we’d got.  I had some of the grandchildren’s outgrown toys in a Fortnum and Mason’s wicker basket that we’d been given several years back.  One chap asked how much for the basket.  I shouted back that it wasn’t for sale, just the toys inside.

We set up tables with our tat, and the vultures starting picking it over.  Quite a few of them wanted our Fortnum and Mason wicker basket, and Sam suggested selling it for £100. The sight of a group of vultures around our tables sent other vultures racing over to see what they were missing.  We were surrounded; this was a good start!

The morning ticked by. I felt as though I’d been up for hours, and it was only 08:15.  Kelly as usual was raking it in with her kids’ toys, books and games, but our tat wasn’t being shifted as fast.  Sam wandered off to buy a bacon roll and to look at other people’s tat, with strict instructions not to bring any of it back as we had enough of our own.  I yawned, sat in my beach chair still covered in Isle of Wight sand, and looked ever hopeful whenever a potential customer mooched along.

By 11:00 hrs everybody was packing up and I was windswept and starving hungry, as I’d eaten my breakfast at 05:45.  Kelly had made nearly £90, but Stevie with twice the amount of tat had only made £22.50 and had to bring the majority of it back home again.  Hey ho, such is life.  I worked on the assumption that it was a cold day and not many people had ventured out.  Kelly said to try again, but I think I’ll leave it until the summer!

Have you ever ‘done a car boot’? Would you do another one?  What’s a car boot sale called in the US?

An Exercise for the Mind

Tags

cancer, radiotherapy

Yesterday I went to Addenbrooke’s hospital for the first of eventually 47 radiotherapy and consultant review appointments, which will thankfully end on 25th May.  I had no idea of what was coming, and looking back, I think ignorance was probably a good thing.

I was aware that ‘at some point’ in the near future, my protective mask was going to be made.  This turned out to be yesterday.  I was shown a flat outline of a head and shoulders in some unknown breathable material which was attached to a frame, and told that it was to be heated up in a container of hot water and then placed on my face.  This would cause the material to mould itself to my facial contours, but apparently I would still be able to breathe (how reassuring).

This is where the exercise for the mind comes into play.  I am slightly claustrophobic, and as I lay flat on the CT scanner, I was told to close my eyes.  I dutifully complied with a racing heart, and then what can only be described as a thick hot blanket came down on my face.  As the heat left the blanket and it started to harden, the doctor and nurse clamped the frame to the CT scanner, rendering my head and shoulders totally immobile.  I then laid like this for at least 15 minutes while they scanned my neck and made marks on the mask regarding the area they wanted to treat.

I started to try and take myself away from my plight.  I imagined my newly-purchased holiday home, and the journey along the M11, M25 and A3 that I would need to make to get there.  Then I imagined myself and Sam sitting on the decking with a drink to watch the sun set.  Then I tried to work out how much 47 years of site fees would cost, but failed miserably as I am number illiterate. The time dragged endlessly by, and I realised that every time I presented for treatment, I would have to go through exactly the same thing, except that for future appointments the mask would have already been made.

Apparently I can take some CD’s with me for next time and concentrate on the music, which I might have done yesterday had they warned me what was going to happen.  Ugh, the whole process is horrific.  The only good thing about thyroid cancer treatment (or any other cancer treatment for that matter) is that you learn how to endure.

If you were in my position laid flat on a CT scanner with the hated mask over your face, what would you do?  I’d love to know!

 

Cruise Memories

On a lighter note today, I thought I’d show you a little bit of our holiday.  Not too much, just in case you get bored!  It was lovely to get away from the British winter for a while.

Our home for a fortnight – the Celebrity Equinox

This multi-million dollar house in the Cayman Islands only has 2 bedrooms!

Ride of death back to the ship in the tender, just before it got nasty!

Swimming with the dolphins in Costa Maya

At a Mayan village. Yes, he’s putting his bare foot in the fire!

 

Stevie with Captain Costas

 

On a New Orleans streetcar

 

Mardi Gras!

 

The iconic Lafayette cemetery No. 1

 

On the beach at Cozumel, complete with Mayan warpaint