Newsletter chitchat - February 4, 2025

[Cassel]

Did you experience an exceptional service?

Did you see someone really go our of their way to offer you a service?

Let's share. It is so much more fun to read about GREAT services!

[Lyn Lou]

My mum had a stroke last June, we had been out for fathers day, when mum took a turn. We left the restaurant and and drove back to my daughters as it was just up the road and phoned for an ambulance. They came quickly within the hour and took mum to hospital. As she is 92, and they deemed her to be a fit person for her age, they decided to "Thrombolyse" her to prevent any blood clots it meant she had to lay flat for 24 hours without movement. They do not normally do that for elderly people. Also, the fact that we got her into the hospital quickly and she was treated within the 4 hour window, it lessened the damage that could have been caused by the stroke. The main area it effected, was part of the brain where the short term memory is located, and she is struggling to walk. She used to do a lot of walking. (She started having a number of falls and did not tell us or accept offers of help or treatment).
After a few days they let her home and I stayed with her for a few days till I was confident she would be ok on her own over the weekend. Within a few days, there was another emergency, she kept getting vertigo and panic attacks, so once again she was back in hospital in the same department, and each time they would do all the stroke checks, as it is possible for people to have a 2nd or 3rd stroke after the first one. That was not the case for mum.....as we discovered when she was placed in a bed, there were bruises up her arm, we did not know how they got there! Mum was confused and not sure how she got them?.....We had since discovered that she had gone out into the garden to sort an overgrown bush and as she tried to pull the branches off, she fell backwards, hitting her head, and falling on her arm.......since then her arm is like a frozen shoulder, she has torn tendons, and is still having problems with that, its been 8 months now since the stroke!! (she is banned from her garden, it is not safe for her, she used to spend everyday working on it).
She had a few more vertigo/panic attacks and headaches, so an ambulance called out another couple of times, and not taken her in, with out help and that of the stroke team she has since learned to manage it, and now no longer gets these attacks, but did get headaches for a while). 
Over the following 5/6 months we had a stream of medical people from the Stroke team visiting mum assessing her house, assessing her needs, assessing her memory. And providing services for her, and making her home as safe as they possibly can.  I make regular visits to see her, and put her tablets in her dispenser every week and take her to all her appointments and there have been loads of appointments since the stroke. 
Considering our health service as been struggling to cope with the volume of patients particularly since covid. These ladies, were amazing with mum, and including providing advice to help me look after mum. It was not easy to do so. Mum is an easy going person, and is profoundly deaf, so we got her some new hearing aids. which has helped a lot. But she is set in her ways of doing things, so it has been tough trying to retrain her to be able to stay safe at home.
We had a few incidents, ie she had called me to say she had a fall but was ok, I mentioned it to my sister who decided to go over there, and when my sister opened the door she smelt gas, it had been on all afternoon, mum was unaware of that, she was in the lounge watching TV! So my sister and her son got mum to safety, turned the gas off and opened all the doors and windows.  And stayed till it was safe for mum . Even though mum was signed off by the stroke team continued to organised appointments for mum and a few more visits. I cannot fault their dedication to their job and to mum, without them, mum and I would have struggled without their support and the amount of time they have spent with us since her stroke.  Sorry its a long post. 


There was a delivery company called Hermes, their deliveries were often late, did not not turn up with parcels, parcels got lost. Everyone was complaining about them. Then they changed the name of the company to Evri, (I think the company was taken over). After that, we had a regular guy delivering our parcels, and we became friends with this guy, he was friendly, always on time, and if we were not in, he knew to either deliver it the next day or place it in our safe place. (other companies struggle to find that safe place!).  Over Christmas, we also which is always our busiest time of year, it was our busiest year as mum had a lot of appointments before and after Christmas. It was the busiest Christmas ever!. Our delivery guy was brilliant with managing our deliveries so that nothing went missing and everything was delivered! Such a great guy.