Thursday

There had been another staff rotation on the stroke rehab ward and yet another new doctor came to speak to me.

He spoke briefly about Mum’s discharge and quite matter-of-factly added that it would happen tomorrow morning. TOMORROW!! As far as he knew, a full therapy package was going to go with her including physio and speech. I asked where she was going and he had to go away and check. It was a home somewhere in Epping Forest.

Once we had a name for the home, we could start Googling furiously. Brother found it on StreetView and said it looked like a new build. He also found the CQC rating and some individual reviews. The overall CQC rating was Good but the individual were a bit mixed and ranged from Good to Needs Improvement.

I wasn’t especially worried by reviews from individuals as they would be heavily influenced by patient needs and family expectations. The lack of a library or a poor range of group activities wouldn’t make any difference to Mum, with or without a stroke.

All I was concerned about was whether it was clean, whether the food was edible and whether the staff were caring.

This was going to be the start of what we believed would be a six week period of fully funded care.

Author’s Note

My Mum is in a nursing home in a small village in the Thames Valley. The photo is not of the home. I used an AI image generator to give the reader some idea of the home she’s in.

All, some or maybe even none (you’ll never know!) of the names have been changed to protect privacy and hide real identities. If you think you recognise someone then let me know and I’ll edit the post or remove it entirely