Husband fighting to be heard in care battle for wife’s quality of life

WHEN she recovered from surgery after being diagnosed with not one but two separate brain tumours, Dee McGreevy visited her work to chat with colleagues and tell them she would soon be back.

The milestone moment for the former nurse and her husband Thomas came after a year where her life had been blighted by increasingly severe headaches, and finally an emergency dash to hospital where her cancer diagnosis was confirmed.

Going back to her workplace offered a glimpse of a bright future for the couple and their two sons, and a return to normalcy after all the turmoil which came with her ill health.

Yet two years later the 56-year-old has been reduced to a “mere existence” as she languishes in a care home, her husband says, after her condition declined dramatically, baffling doctors with its progression.

Now her husband is calling for better care for patients with neurological conditions, saying that the medical profession simply left the family to fend for themselves when Mrs McGreevy’s condition worsened.

“It’s unbelievable that this situation is still possible in 2017. My wife’s life has been reduced to a mere existence,” he said.

“I am still crying out to be heard and still fighting the system for a better quality of life for Dee.

“To see Dee suffer is so distressing but on top of that trying to find my way round the system to get support for my wife and my family has been incredibly stressful.”

After her surgery Mrs McGreevy had seemed on the road to recovery, but alarm bells began to ring one day when her husband returned home to find her waiting to go Christmas shopping with friends.

It turned out there was no trip planned that day, and Mrs McGreevy had become confused.

A return to Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital confirmed she had a build-up of fluid on the brain, which had to be drained.

But afterwards she began to deteriorate. Mr McGreevy said: “She became

Husband Thomas McGreevy has found

cognitively impaired and lost much of her ability to communicate. She basically developed a less severe version of what she’s got now.”

Tests were carried out and neurological disorders were offered as explanations, but these proved inconclusive and her condition remains officially undiagnosed.

During her stay in hospital, which lasted more than a year, Mrs McGreevy was initially given physical therapy to help her regain movement, but this soon petered out.

In the meantime, her husband learned he should be speaking with a social worker, and had to devote his own time to looking

it impossible to find more suitable care for wife Dee after she became

for a care home which could cope with his wife’s complex needs.

Eventually he took early retirement from his job as a librarian at the University of the West of Scotland to devote his time to his wife and getting her the physical and recreational therapies she needs.

Mr McGreevy said: “The problem is, because Dee hasn’t got a diagnosis no-one has known what to do for her and it feels as if every door has been shut and she’s been left to her own devices.

“I can’t fault the care provided by the care home but it doesn’t cater to what I feel are Dee’s needs. At the minute she is in a room 24 hours a day staring at the four

ill.

walls.” He added: “I just want Dee to have some kind of stimulation but I’m going round in circles trying to get the medical profession to show any interest in

Dee’s care.

“If it had been the other way round, and I’d had the problem, the situation would have been completely different, as Dee knows the system.

“I’d never been in a care home in my life – I’d been a central heating engineer and then a university librarian.

“I can tell Dee thinks I’ve tried everything and I’ve long given up expecting any kind of miracle. All I want though is for my wife to have some quality of life.”