My mum was my anchor. My parents split up when I was 11 in 1991 and the years following dad leaving were not always easy. But she always made sure that our home was a place of love, support and guidance. A safe space.
I’ll always remember her big, broad smile. The local paper here in Hinckley, Leicestershire called it “dazzling”. But when Covid happened, she became much more physically and emotionally frail overnight. She’d had a little routine where she’d see her friends during the week, and then it stopped suddenly. She started having these falls – but none of them were as serious as that day.
It was 10 July, 2022. Mum fell at her home in Barwell in Leicestershire as she was getting out of bed to go to the toilet. She’d fallen before, so she had a community alarm. She pressed that, the council then alerted me and I went to her house with a friend.
She said she’d hurt her ribs, so we didn’t try to move her, because you’re told not to. My friend called for an ambulance at 5:01am and they said the wait could be up to 10 hours – but they didn’t think it would be anywhere near that long. As it turned out, help wouldn’t come in any form until 4pm.
I know that you’re not supposed to keep calling 999, but I felt that calling every few hours was the only thing that I could do that day. She was 78 years old. I told them she was frail, hurt and in pain.
I told them she was desperate and in tears. All the call handler could do was to say that they’d get to us as soon as they could. The whole thing was massively undignified, which is the thing that sticks with me the most. My mum deserved better than to be left in that situation for 11 hours.
When a paramedic arrived in a car, she checked mum over and called for an ambulance, which arrived about 30 minutes after that. She was then taken to George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton.
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My mum was my anchor. My parents split up when I was 11 in 1991 and the years following dad leaving were not always easy. But she always made sure that our home was a place of love, support and guidance. A safe space.
I’ll always remember her big, broad smile. The local paper here in Hinckley, Leicestershire called it “dazzling”. But when Covid happened, she became much more physically and emotionally frail overnight. She’d had a little routine where she’d see her friends during the week, and then it stopped suddenly. She started having these falls – but none of them were as serious as that day.
It was 10 July, 2022. Mum fell at her home in Barwell in Leicestershire as she was getting out of bed to go to the toilet. She’d fallen before, so she had a community alarm. She pressed that, the council then alerted me and I went to her house with a friend.
She said she’d hurt her ribs, so we didn’t try to move her, because you’re told not to. My friend called for an ambulance at 5:01am and they said the wait could be up to 10 hours – but they didn’t think it would be anywhere near that long. As it turned out, help wouldn’t come in any form until 4pm.
I know that you’re not supposed to keep calling 999, but I felt that calling every few hours was the only thing that I could do that day. She was 78 years old. I told them she was frail, hurt and in pain.
I told them she was desperate and in tears. All the call handler could do was to say that they’d get to us as soon as they could. The whole thing was massively undignified, which is the thing that sticks with me the most. My mum deserved better than to be left in that situation for 11 hours.
When a paramedic arrived in a car, she checked mum over and called for an ambulance, which arrived about 30 minutes after that. She was then taken to George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton.
No words.