"Placed so much value on quality of life"

In 2021, my dear father had dementia and also severe, painful rheumatism. He had become bedbound after a short stay in hospital. My father caught an infection in hospital, but after this had been treated, he continued to sleep for most of the day and the Occupational Therapists and Physios were unable to get him to stand. 

He was discharged home where he continued to sleep most of the time and didn't want to eat much. Everybody, including the family, thought he would not recover from this state and would continue to be bedbound from now on.

However, amazingly, after several weeks, Dad had recovered a great deal. He would be awake for a lot of the day, chatting away to us quite lucidly at times, really enjoying watching his favourite TV programmes, really enjoying his food. At times he even tried to get out of bed! 

Eventually, we asked for Dad to be referred to the Community OT team as we still had the standing aid that had been delivered to him. Bonnie came to visit but unfortunately, Dad was having a bad couple of days when she came, and slept throughout her visit. 

Mum and I were very disappointed as we had started to believe that Dad may be able to get out of bed and sit in a chair again. Bonnie suggested that we contact her again when we thought Dad was well enough to have a go at using the standing aid. 

A couple of weeks later, Dad seemed to be back to his relatively well self and was again trying to get out of bed. So once this seemed to be a sustained situation, we contacted Bonnie to visit again. 

Once again though, on the day or her visit, he was barely awake and did not have much energy. We all agreed that there didn't seem to be any point in Bonnie visiting again. Dad had vascular dementia, so we knew that his abilities would be one step forward, two steps back, though we had no idea about timescales.

Mum and I  had our arms twisted yet again when, a couple of weeks later, Dad went through another good patch. It felt wrong to condemn him to spend the rest of his days in bed when he seemed relatively energetic and the standing aid still had not been collected. 

I phoned Bonnie again to talk the situation through with her and she offered to come back to see Dad again.

The third of Bonnie's visits was also unsuccessful, but I was struck by how this wonderful stranger placed so much value and importance on my dad's quality of life in the last few months of his life!.

The OT service must  be under pressure to devote their time to patients who have a higher chance of being rehabilitated. And yet, Bonnie valued my dad enough to  come back a third time to offer him the chance to be able to get out of bed once more, even if just for a few months or weeks. 

Remembering this has often been a comfort to me! Thank you, Bonnie!