It's time to do what I must do...

...Collect Beryl's clothing and personal things together and take them to a charity shop. In fact I did this yesterday and respectfully laid each top, cardigan, coat, jacket, dress, handbags, shoes etc from her wardrobe and each item brought back memories to me. I remember her wearing that top for that occasion and using that bag for this occasion so it was a difficult thing to do but I remembered that others that have been bereaved having to do the same thing and it was not easy so I did not expect it to be any easier for me. Anyway I carefully placed everything into black bin bags...which made me cry again as I was trying not to think that her things were rubbish, which the bin bags are used for. Anyway five bin bags were filled and ready for taking to a local charity shop which I made sure was not a charity shop that I would deem as a 'fake charity' who received most of it's money from the government to peddle anti lifestyle choices. Bernado's is the shop locally and I have heard some things about them but I'll let that slide as I hope some less fortunate people may benefit from all of Beryl's things.

Anyway tomorrow I expect her brother to take me and her bin bag laden clothes to the charity shop but there are a few things that I couldn't bear to part with. One was her heart shaped makeup case because I remember buying it for her knowing how she was fastidious about putting on her makeup, a thing that she abandoned once that that robber of minds took her over, Alzheimer's. Of course I have retained her wedding and engagement rings in a heart shaped glass dish that she bought many years ago, some things cannot be parted with.

While I went through Beryl's things I chanced upon two photographs I'd never seen before and they set the tears flowing. They were photos of Beryl a few years before I met her, what a sexy lady she was and I can see why I was bewitched by her, even though the second photo is a bit blurred.

 

Beryl at large in London

Don't know where this was taken but it is my Beryl.

And here is a couple of videos taken relatively recently. The first one was taken in the summer of last year, 2011 and is at a BBQ in the flats where we live and we were all banished outside to have a smoke, Beryl is the one with her back to camera all in white.

And the second video is at her brother's 93rd birthday party. She is standing at the back above her brother Colin, who died in January with another form of dementia called Vascular Dementia. So sad that two siblings died within a month of each other. Beryl's death will be remembered by me but her life will be remembered more. Life has more memories in it than death.

To be continued...

Beryl

Good friends, most of them I have never met, have said that I should carry on posting my thoughts on my lovely wife Beryl, something I thought I would not, or could not do but here I am doing it, I suppose I am on auto pilot.

First of all I would like to thank all those who have sent me emails of condolence from friends at Freedom2Choose and family who read this blog. Your words have lifted me up and made me cry in equal measure. Thank you for your kindness.

I have surprised myself by making arraignments for Beryl's funeral, a thing I thought I would not be able to bear. But through a drunken fug I did so.

Yesterday I had to go to register Beryl's death less than 24 hours after her demise. To say that I didn't want to go there is an understatement. Go there I did, with the help of my bro in law who drove me and had difficulty parking his car. Why are these places difficult to find? Anyway I thought I would be taken to reception and asked to sign something but that did not happen. Instead I was taken to a quiet room, tastefully decorated and a young lady asked me if I wanted coffee or tea. Coffee was given to me and a three quarters of an hour talking about Beryl interview, if you can call it that, ensued. The young lady was very good at her job, she put me, the bereaved, at ease and slipped in the box ticking questions as we talked about Beryl. Then I had to go into the next room to meet the coroner's assistant to finalise the death certificate. Again I was given the sympathy treatment but at no stage did I feel pandered to, I felt at ease, the only time I have done so since she died.

I say all of the above because I realise that many people go through the same thing and I want to help eleviate their pain of having to go through the same thing. I cant thank these people enough for easing me through the burdon of my loss.

When I got home I plucked up the courage to contact a local funeral director. Again they were marvelous and I suppose that part of their job is to make the bereaved feel at ease while they are coming to terms with their loss. Anyway things have been finalised.

My beloved Beryl will be taken from these flats at 11,45am on Thursday the 23rd of February to be taken the short distance to where we were married over 40 years ago and a service will take place. From there she will be taken to the cremetorium where she will go to her final resting place to be cremated to her favourite piece of music, Clair De Lune by Claude Debussey. I will be one of the Pall bearers.

Beryl, you leave a tear in my heart that I don't know if I'll recover from. I love you, always have and always will.

Flying with Angels: Beryl Rosemary Baker (nee Saul) 11.02.1939-16.02.2012. R.I.P.

Today at 1.45pm in the James Cooke Memorial Hospital in Middlesbrough, my beloved wife Beryl passed away. She suffered only from the time I realised that something different was happening and the paramedics came, which was within five to ten minutes. Her pain was alleviated and her breathing regulated by oxygen and she was made comfortable so I would like to thank the doctors, nurses and paramedics for making my wife's last few hours on this earth free of pain and stress to her weakening body.

My Beryl loved life and hated cruelty, in all it's forms. She was an animal lover who could not see them suffer at the hands of people or their ineptitude to look after them. She hated war, in it's many forms and could not understand why man would kill man nor politicians that would send young men to kill fellow young men, no matter what country they came from...yet she married me, a soldier. She was an artist, musician (kinda good on the piano organ :¬), sorry Beryl,) and a campaigner for womens rights. She campaigned against the testing of the atom bomb by the Frence in the eighties and stood outside a supermarket gatherning signatures while I gave not much support for her cause.

Above all Beryl turned a 19 year old boy into a man! She turned that boy's life into a life worth living, a life full of love, not hatred, caring, not sentiment and certainly not a life that condemns a human being through the colour of their skin. Beryl was, and still is, my hero.

God bless my darling wife, you are no longer dancing with wolves but dancing with angels, and I know you loved dancing, expecially balet. Dance with the angels my love.

In the words of Whitney Houston:

I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU.

The end.

Being pulled apart. Part 2: A care home is not a home from home.

13 days after her return from hospital Beryl was once again uprooted, this time to a care home called Ormesby Grange. Fortunately enough Ormesby Grange was only a ten minute walk from the flats down the main road that runs beside this building and I was able to visit every day, twice a day. On the day I picked her up from the care home I was told by the staff that they thought she may have a urinary infection as her urine had a strong odour, a pointer to such an infection. The infection had  made Beryl more unresponsive than usual and she was sleeping for long periods and losing her apatite and unable to take much liquids, a most worrying time as her brother died last month and he had stopped drinking and eating. I called the doctor and she prescribed antibiotics. Seven or eight days later I got a phone call from the doctor saying that the antibiotics she had prescribed were resistant to that type of Urinary Infection but when I told her that I thought the infection was gone as her urine no longer had an odour she left it at that. A few days later I smelt the same odour that pointed to her recent infection and once again she stopped, or could not swallow fluids or food to any life sustaining degree.

I got the doctor out again yesterday and he prescribed a more potent antibiotic, which I took to the chemist who, would you believe, did not have it in stock so I had to wait till today to get it. She has had one dose and another two to go before bedtime so I do hope this takes effect rather quickly as it is hard to eat myself when Beryl has been without much food or drink for so long.

Since Beryl came out of hospital after the new year I have called the doctor and the NHS Direct a few times and each time a doctor came to see her they gave her the full treatment, ie blood pressure check, heart monitoring and chest monitoring and found her chest, heart and blood pressure ok which relieves my mind somewhat and can only think that this damn infection of the Urinary Tract has took the wind out of her sails but each time she goes through such things it appears to me her dementia gets that little bit worse, I do hope I am wrong but I fully realise there is no fairytale ending to Alzheimer's, I know how it ends but I do not know when. I am preparing for the worse because I know it is coming, will we see this year out together I keep wondering?

Beryl is in what I see as being in the late stages of her dementia and can no longer communicate to me or others by word of mouth. She can walk, with my aid and I now have a wheelchair to take her on longer journeys to the shops which I have not done so much recently due to the bad weather and her present ill health. She communicates anger pretty well which lets me know when I am doing something wrong. This can be unhelpful at times like when I am trying to give her medicine or feeding her by hand, which I have to do. Sometimes when feeding her and she gets angry she takes the spoon out of my hand to feed herself, which bolsters me because that is one thing why I married her, she always was her own woman so it is ironic that she is reduced to this. Beryl turned 73 today the 11th of February 2012.

Recently the news has been full of reports about the treatment of our elderly and vulnerable who are cared by the state and the news does not bode well. This is why I have vowed that Beryl and I will leave this world in our own home rather than spend our days being looked after by others that do not know us and probably do not care to know us. When our life cycle ends naturally it's good to go in your own bed. Sorry for appearing to be so maudlin.

PS: Things are at a stage now with me and Beryl that I have not time to add anything to the Freedom2Choose blog and my interests are elsewhere as Beryl's decline gets more pronounced. I will carry on looking after the mundain things for F2C like office duties but blog writing and commenting on all things smoking ban are not of my biggest concern at the moment.

To be continued...

Being pulled apart. Part 1: A not so Happy New Year

A couple of days before new year 2011 I noticed that Beryl had a "rattle" on her chest whenever she breathed and was worried. I thought at first it was just the phlegm there due to her stopping smoking earlier in the year. By Friday the 30th of December I was sufficiently worried to call out the doctor who reckoned that she had a chest infection and prescribed antibiotics. By midnight, after only two doses of antibiotics I was about to go to bed but could not as I percieved that her breathing had gotten worse. I panicked and phoned 999 for an ambulance. After much deliberation by the ambulance service it was decided that they would send out an emergency doctor rather than send an ambulance, twenty minutes it was said it would take for them to arrive. One hour later, no Doctor. I phoned 999 again and this time an ambulance was called, it was now around 1.30am on New Years Eve.

It was six thirty am on that day that, after being ignored every hour, on the hour whilst we were enconsed in a cubicle, that some junior doctor finally decided to admit her. I noticed that the A&E was not exactly over crowded and saw the doctor, and in turn, the nurse chatting and laughing as though they had no work to do and was unimpressed, to say the least. I believe in the National Health Service but I do despair at the way it is going, I really do.

By six thirty that new years eve morn I was exhausted as we put Beryl into a bed on a ward until, in turn, a nurse and a doctor saw her and I was needed to attend. Apart from the usual form filling I was needed to reasure her and help hold her while they stuck needles in her arm, one for a blood sample and another for the insertion of a cannula into the back of her hand for intrevenous drips of antibotics and saline. I got home briefly at around 10 am and fell asleep exhausted.

I visited at three pm that new years eve and Beryl's arm was a mass of bruises from the numerous invasions into her veins, later the cannula was to be transplanted into her stomach and another mass of bruise ensued. I wept for her pain later that day.

Beryl was released from the hospital on January the 3rd 2012, the same day her brother Colin was cremeated, her brother who was wracked with vascular dementia, the dementia that ultimately killed him, things do not bode well and I know the outcome of this scenario, it's just when?

The next upheaval is when Beryl went into respite whilst the council removed the deadly Asbestos that has been with us this last forty odd years. This upheaval took place on Tuesday the 17th of January.

Part two to be continued...

My beautiful wife, stresses and strains.

To any human being with an ounce of humanity the suffering of another person should touch their heart, however small that touch may be. The closer you are to a person that is suffering from an affliction that is incurable then the more humanity takes over guided by overriding love. Love is more potent than many people realise and is the inspiration for the many things people do, for good or otherwise, but I believe that love conquers every time. The love I have for my wife keeps me going through her hell that is called Alzheimer's.

Recent events seem to have increased her suffering in a way that is plainly visible.

A couple of days before new years eve I noticed Beryl making a sigh like sound every time she breathed out and a 'rattling' sound that appeared to come from her chest. The rattling sound was her breath blowing through phlegm which made her more lethargic than usual, she was finding it difficult to get up or walk. On the Friday before new years eve I called the doctor out and he pronounced that she had a chest infection and left a prescription for an antibiotic which was in fluid form. I had only given her two doses that night which was not enough time to do anything to relieve her symptoms but I panicked.

Around midnight that Friday I was going to bed but could not lay down listening to her obvious discomfort which, it appeared to me, was getting worse. That's when I went into panic mode.

I first looked up the NHS Direct website for a phone number to call but could not find one so resorted to dialling 999, a call I didn't want to make to this overworked service but felt compelled to do so. I was put through to the ambulance service and after a long chat about Beryl's condition the lady on the other end thought it was not a bad enough situation to warrant an ambulance call to take her to hospital and she said she would alert a locum doctor to come and see her, they would arrive in twenty minutes or so. I waited for nearly an hour and no locum. I phoned 999 again and this time an ambulance was dispatched and Beryl and I were taken to James Cook University Hospital's A&E department, we arrived just after 1am on New Years Eve. That morning was an experience that I would never want to repeat nor have it repeated on my lovely wife, it was horrendous.

By five thirty in the morning of New Years Eve they eventually admitted her to a ward and Beryl was immediately put on a drip of antibiotics and saline to rehydrate her. I still wonder if she was given the saline because I had not given her enough to drink in the days beforehand. I got home that morning around 10am and just had to have a couple of hours sleep as I had not slept for around 36 hours.

Beryl was released from hospital on Tuesday the 3rd of January this year, the same day as her beloved brother was cremated, thankfully she was blissfully unaware of this.

Now that she is back home her 'rattling' has gone and the antibiotics had done their job. She had a mass of bruises on the back of her hand, arm and stomach which was testament to how this confused woman was prodded and pulled, not that any blame lies here, she had to have blood tests and a cannula inserted for the drip, which she constantly fiddled with so they put one in her stomach instead. A stressful time for most of us who are fit of mind but for an Alzheimer's patient it is intolerable.

Since Beryl has come out of hospital things have changed. Before she went in she could get up and walk, meddle in the kitchen thinking she was helping me and generally get in my way when working about the flat. Now she has great difficulty in standing and her walking is laboured. Her speech is more slurred at times and she speaks less. Before I was worried about her eating and now I am more worried as she would only take one small fork full of food before leaving it to go cold. I now have to spoon feed her, an act that has tears running down my cheeks sometimes. How it has come to this I do not know.

There are more worries and stresses on the horizon for both of us. Work is about to take place in the flat and arrangements have been made for Beryl to go into respite care at a local care home for one week. And to top it all she has developed a bad back! Both of us could do without this intrusion that must take it's toll on both of us. I fear for the future.

The top pic is of Beryl and I when I had an ear infection and was confined to bed. The photo was taken by Beryl's just deceased brother Colin. God knows why he came so early and ended up catching Beryl with her dressing gown on. The bottom pic is from god know when and I was such a handsome and young chap.

To be continued...

R.I.P Colin Saul-Death of a quiet man.

 Born on the 19th January 1933, passed away on the 22nd December 2011. You are forever Imprinted in my memory Colin R.I.P

Colin Saul was a unique man of intellect the likes of which I/we will never see again and he will be sorely missed.

You see Colin was not only my Brother in Law but my friend. Colin helped me through the formative years of my marriage to his sister Beryl whenever troubles struck and asked nothing in return. He was a generous man, not only of deed but in body, who gave his time freely without aforethought and had no malicious thoughts or intentions in his well read head. He seen the best in everybody, even though they did not warrant it, which I am sure I did not many a time.

Colin, if I recollect rightly, was the first from the Saul family to go to college and wanted to be an optician but that was not to pan out, he ended his working life in the petrochemical industry and used to take samples regularly from huge tankers back to the lab for analysis. I'm sure that taking these samples was a contributory factor in him contracting Vascular Dementia. Colin was a never smoker.

You succumbed, my friend, to that robber of mind, body and soul that is called Dementia. But you did not give in to this thief lightly, you hung on as if you were clinging to life it's very self and we whom are left behind new this, we applauded in our very hearts and hoped amongst all the odds you would survive your ordeal...but alas this was not to happen.

Good night Colin, and God bless.

Colin at College, extreme right.

Colin as a young man.