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 😂🙈

I remember the rhododendron bushes in Carndhu, so that must have been June time? Ann the really long evenings.
Id quite like Corfu looking out to sea, wrapped in a blanket. Then being served light, nutritious meals. Several times a day.

My best friends dad worked as a gardener at a union convalescent home when I was a dc. They were a thing 30 years ago anyway.

@Minedoes Thank you so much....x

No I'm sure my mum went to Southend or somewhere when my Nan had TB. 1950s??? Will ask her

@eggandonion I've just googled Cairndhu as I wondered what happened to it. It's sad...fallen into disrepair and now known as one of the most haunted places in NI. Apparently you can visit the grounds but the house is out of bounds. There were pics...it's completely delapidated.

I don't think i was allowed inside, children were not really allowed in hospital to visit. Probably very sensible.
What a shame, it must be worth a fortune. It was like the big house at the folk museum, in my head.
I must google, the hospital in Greenisland was in the Branagh film?

Not a myth. I was sent to a ‘convalescent home’ aged 6 after pneumonia!

There used to be dedicated convalescent hospitals. I was in hospital in the late '90s & the hospital had some convalescent wards where people would stay for a few weeks. They would wear their day clothes & get help to prepare for home. It was invaluable for someone who was recovering from surgery or a prolonged illness.

They were real. Children (including one of my brothers) sent to seaside resorts after contracting measles, scarlet fever and such like.

I know that the Royal British Legion has a hotel in Southport. My uncle had 2 weeks in the summer there for a few years .
I'm sure they have more of them in other resorts .

My Grandmother had been a cook in a large Edwardian establishment, and she had very firm ideas about what a convalescing person should eat.
Steamed fish featured a lot, as did plain broths and milky puddings. Slippery elm was often mentioned, along with beef tea and of course egg-in-a-cup with bread & butter fingers.

Not all that long ago I had a stay in a BUPA hospital, where mid morning you could order a cup of hot consommé with toast fingers. It was served in one of those beautiful large fluted French breakfast cups, and took me straight back to being seven and being cared for by my Grandma.

Unison has a holiday place on Croyde Bay, and I think it may have started life as a convalescent home for union members. Certainly it was the only reliable place to pick up the Guardian. :o

Not read the whole thread but they still are a thing, husband had a shoulder operation and was then able to spend two weeks in the police convalescent home.

I have a distant memory of visiting my Grandmother when she was convalescing after an operation. I remember sitting in the gardens of a beautiful country home with her and my Mother. All paid for by the NHS!

It’s good to read that people can still be sent away to convalesce as part of their care plan.
My Mum was sent to a seaside convalescent home following major emergency surgery in the mid-70s. We’ve lost so many vital elements in care over the years. Such false economy in so many cases.

We have Kurs in my home country. You are legally entitled to one every two years, whether you work or not
They're prescribed by the doctor, and your employer has to give you the time off by law, it is for three weeks.
You have to participate in ' relaxing ' activities such as painting etc.
I went on one once and I was bored out of my head after four days and returned home.

My grandad went to Mevagissey to recover from an operation.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

My Mil went on one, after a hysterectomy.

I’ve just read an old novel, where (pre antibiotics) someone was sent to Davos to try to recover from TB. Plenty of money, obviously, and he did recover, in the book.
No such luck for poor U.K. city dwellers, where TB was rife.

In the late 20s a great uncle was sent home from a tb hospital to die. There were six children in a two and a half bedroom house with an outside toilet and no bathroom. They made him up a bed in the best of the chicken sheds.

Damn! I was thinking of having tummy surgery done then convalescing somewhere cos I live on my own. I guess if I was to pay privately??? It is only a dream at the moment. Though if I had the surgery abroad I suppose they still have the facilities.

@Ifailed

It was not uncommon for people who didn't need to be in hospital, but needed some assistance to be transferred into convalescence homes before they were well enough to return home.

Like many things, this was all destroyed by Thatcher's "Care in the Community" philosophy, where by people where sent home to be cared for there, often by blackmailing their family (women, of course) to take on the role. All driven to save money, now all we are left with is private care homes run to make a profit.

Exactly.......shortsighted, ideology driven, and like many of these cost saving measures, counter productive. As well as heartless.

The day after my 18th I was hit by a car and nearly died. I was sent to a convalescent home in Oakham for a few weeks

My colleague has had a knee replacement this year and booked himself into a convalescent home for 10 days so that he could have some physio every day. He paid for it privately.

@Draytoncb

Ok, after what happened to you, I feel embarrassed saying this but I was also an avid reader of anything Enid Blyton I could get my hands on. Obsessed with her stuff. I had also just read Little Women.

I was ill with a rare childhood disease and convinced that I needed to convalesce in Switzerland for ‘the air’. I may have even mentioned it to the doctor who visited me at home. I was quite sure he had forgotten to tell my parents.

I also felt cheated out of my convalescence after I recovered and may have developed some whimpering coughs.

For a long time afterwards, I would ruminate on the Heidi like vision in my head and feel that one day, I would again, breathe fresh air, straight from the Tyrol (not so big on geography in those days).

No wonder I grew up to be an English teacher....

I don’t know if this has been mentioned, but there is a book by Betty McDonald called The Plague and I about convalescing in a Washington State “resort” in the 20s. Very interesting - and amusing.

@Bellalastrasse - I think in the UK we had Bridlington… the North Sea was supposed to be therapeutic. And if you survived the icy blasts there I reckon you were judged to be cured!