Old fashioned convalescence holidays. Were they a real thing or only in stories?

[StillTheOneIRunToooooo]

I read a lot of Enid Blyton type books in my childhood 😂🙈

@StillTheOneIRunToooooo

Genuinely, covid has knocked me for six. I have this bizarre longing for the freshest air I can find.

Same here! I really fancy a month or two in one of those fancy Swiss sanitoriums, like in The Magic Mountain (sigh)

Re convalescent care in Ireland... I know an elderly lady who had her appendix out after a nightmare stay on an a and e trolley where nobody considered appendicitis as a possibility. Her husband had just had his hip replacement done.
She was discharged into a very nice nursing home, while he had carers at home. I assume they had very expensive health insurance though.

See my thread on craicnet eggandonion, inspired by this thread. Middle aged lady with small shabby house and two messy teenagers wants to go away and hunker down in peace in a lovely hotel room overlooking a river. Wifi. Pile of books. Big massive pillows.... Room service. Any ideas?!

My grandmother spent a year in convalescent/therapy after she spent just under a year in hospital with Polio. She and my mother caught polio literally weeks before the vaccine became available.

Would everybody thnk I'd had a hysterectomy? Iwouldn't care!

There's a recent book on this topic

amp.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/18/recovery-the-lost-art-of-convalescence-by-dr-gavin-francis-review-the-art-of-getting-better

My brother and I were fostered for a month while my mother spent time in a convalescent home after major surgery. My father had to work and we had no nearby relatives to help. My mother always said it was wonderful.

An elderly friend booked herself into a luxurious care home for a week after a hip replacement rather than be a burden to her family.

I recall that when my Ma had an hysterectomy many years ago she was sent - arranged by the NHS - for a weeks convalescence by the sea.

My mum lived in the US as a teen, when WW2 was happening. Her and her brother got TB (or pneumonia maybe?), and were sent to live at their cousin Nellie's place in the Arizona desert, because of the good air.
She told me they slept outside nearly the whole time, in a tent or something, to maximise the convalescence impact. And she learnt to ride horses there when she was better. Straight legged, American-style.

Some unions offer this I think.

I've just joined to comment on this! 😁 I've been thinking just how much i'd love a convalescent place right now. In the past month I've spent 12 days in hospital with a gallbladder infection and sepsis. The antibiotics gave me thrush....the weeks course of thrush treatment gave me gastritis and now I've come down with covid symptoms but so far 3 lft tests are negative. You couldn't make it up....I should change my name to "Lucky". I feel like a worn out dish rag ...only my sense of humour keeping me clinging on to what's left of my sanity. I live with my 3 adult ds....they are great but my God what I'd give for a month by the sea.
I'm in NI... originally from the Antrim coast area and can remember my mum working in a convalescence home....that would have been the 60's. It was beautiful....set in fantastic surroundings overlooking the sea. What a shame these places no longer exist...mind you there are probably private versions....definitely out of my range.

There also used to be the idea of special food for convalescence, my mum's old cook book had a chapter for 'invalid cooking' with foods I didn't understand like beef tea and calfs jelly

My father was in hospital as a child for about 4/6 weeks. Then home for a week before being sent to Carshalten to convalesce.

There were other boys there doing the same

He had great fun as the beds were on wheels so they messed about.

I even have a few photographs in the lift from his time there

I am now convinced I need some sunshine

I read the same Tyrolean books as you too!

You might like this memoir about visiting a sanatorium in Budapest

Still is a thing in Germany although harder now to get approved by the health insurance companies who mainly pay. With an understanding GP you can though. My exMIL was v open about it, she'd present with "worsening rheumatism symptoms" over months and have 3 weeks in a clinic every year. She saw it as her right.

I work in a school and we sometimes have students off for 3 weeks on a "Mother/Child" cure. Often a family with problems after a divorce/break-up. We send them school work so they can keep up.

The health insurance companies still do mostly approve rehabilitation for patients post surgery. Remember my friends being horrified my dad was discharged home after triple-bypass surgery in the UK.

I would kill for 3 weeks at one of those German or Austria spa places. Just need my children to be old enough to ditch them for that long. Only another 10 years to go…

Yep, my Mum was sent away as a young child to convalescent home by the sea; late 1950's.

FIL was sent to convalescent home after his triple bypass in the mids-70s.
I think it was somewhere like Biggin Hill so not very exotic or relaxing by today's standards.

@JeanMarie, was it Cairndhu near Larne? My great aunts used to have stays in there, it was lovely.

Yes they were my Dad had scarlet fever and ran away from the convalescent home - aged 5!!

Yes it was Cairndhu! I'm so chuffed that someone here knows it. lol

@Toddlerteaplease

We should bring them back. It would take some of the pressure of Hospitals and social care. As people have more time to recover with support.

Too right.

When my mother broke her hip she went away for a month in the sun

Get well soon JeanMarie