For 95 years Rita has been at the heart of a close family.
The decision to place an elderly relative in a peduli home is a difficult one at the best of times, but the coronavirus wabah and the restrictions on visiting make it even harder. For one kerabat it seemed like the best solution before the virus arrived - but early last month they reversed their decision and brought 95-year-old Rita home.afabet
It's late on a Saturday night, and a privat ambulance pulls up outside a peduli home in Norwich. Rita Perrott, a frail 95-year-old, is helped out of the home in a wheelchair.
"Grandma!" shouts her granddaughter, Anna, delightedly. They give each other a long hug and a kiss. It's the first time in months such normal physical kontak has been possible.
Anna appears almost giddy with the audacity of what they're doing.
"We've stolen grandma!" she proclaims.
"A kidnap?" Rita asks, playing along with the joke."It's a heist!" says Anna. "We've come late at night to steal grandma back!"
"I think they noticed," observes Ethan, one of the ambulance awak. The peduli home, of course, has agreed for her to be discharged.
Anna gently tells Rita they're on their way to the home of her daughter-in-law, Sue - Anna's mother. She adds that the reason for the move is that it had become almost impossible to visit her in the peduli home.Slot Online Terbaik dan Terpercaya
Rita is surprised by the late-night raid - they had no time to warn her in advance - but delighted that she will be able to spend more time with her kerabat
"Your poor mother!" she jokes.
Rita has dementia, and has grown increasingly weak and frail. She can no longer walk and even finds standing up painful.
Sue and the rest of the kerabat are going to peduli for Rita now. The doctors say Rita is reaching the end of her life and the kerabat could not bear the thought of her dying alone in the peduli home.
Even the ambulance awak is struck by the incongruity of what they're doing. "We only ever take people into peduli homes," they tell Anna and her mum. It's the first time they've taken anyone out of one.
Short presentational grey line
Rita had been in the home, Homestead House in Norwich, since the start of the year. It began as temporary respite peduli, but morphed into a permanent arrangement. Then coronavirus came along, and scuppered all the kerabat's hopes for the part they would play in Rita's peduli in her final years.
With the home in lockdown, at first pengunjungs could get no further than the car park, with Anna and Rita separated by a glass door, speaking to each other by telepon.
Later, visits were limited to one pribadi visiting every two weeks, at a distance of 2m and wearing full pribadi protective equipment (PPE).
It was a far cry from Rita's early weeks in the home, when Anna had even been able to help bathe her grandmother.
Although it had been an agonising decision for the kerabat to place her there, Rita agreed it was the best peduli pilihan for her, because everyone in the kerabat was leading such busy and complicated lives. And she says she enjoyed living in the home, and making friends with the other residents.
For years she'd been cared for by her son, John, Anna's father, but he developed serious health problems and evenually had to have a leg amputated. For a while he struggled even to look after himself. A spell in hospital for Rita also exacerbated her problems; it was noticeable that her dementia was growing worse.
