My heartache that dad had no place to go in final weeks
HEARTBROKEN Karen Moore says her father died without dignity after spending six months in hospital as there was nowhere for him to go.
Just like his father and brother, former electrician Edward Knowles was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2012. The next year his wife Patricia was told she had terminal cancer.
For a while the devoted husband and wife were each other’s carers.
But in the winter of 2016, with her father’s behaviour becoming increasingly erratic and his agitation growing, Karen found a home that would take him but he was struck down with a kidney infection and ended up in hospital.
It was an unimaginably stressful time for therapist Karen who was forced to shuttle daily between Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester, where her mother was being treated, and Fairfield General Hospital in Bury to see her father.
Although he was medically fit to leave, the family could not find a suitable home so he spent his final six months lying on a bed in a ward where he died in 2017, aged 78, four months after his wife succumbed to her illness at 73.
Weak
Mother-of-two Karen, 42, from Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, said: “Save for a week, he spent the final six months of his life in hospital. He had become so weak. It was dehumanising and there wasn’t much left of him. He was on a ward with no daylight and no fresh air.
“We looked at a few homes but they were not places you’d want your loved ones to be – lots of people sat in a room on wipe-clean armchairs with a TV playing in the corner. They were depressing.
“When I was going through this, I felt so alone. I now realise why so many people end up stuck in hospital. It’s because there isn’t the care out there. I wasn’t confident he would be safe. These were homes that said they were dementia friendly but really they were rock bottom places and he needed a high level of specialist care.
“I ended up on antidepressants and my anxiety went through the roof. I don’t think people realise just how broken the system is until they have to go through it themselves.
“My dad died without dignity – not because of the NHS staff, they were absolutely wonderful – but because of the system, which is completely broken.”