I’ll try and be brief…
My parents retired 150 miles away from me and my younger brother, 15 years ago when they were in their mid sixties.
Since then, my Mum has passed away (6 months ago) and now my father has been admitted to hospital for severe edema due to Heart Failure. He has been in 10 days and has improved slightly but not back to normal, however, the cardiac team are hoping to get him home and have the Acute Hospital at Home Team visit him twice a day.
He lives in a large bungalow with a huge unmanageable garden. Before he became ill, six weeks ago, he was reasonably independent, could still drive and take care of himself but has been struggling with the housework and other tasks due to breathlessness. He finally agreed to a gardener 3 months ago but has always been resistant to having a cleaner.
Since Mum died, I have been visiting him every 3/4 weeks for the weekend and I have him stay with me for a week every 3 months and this has been manageable. However, since this hospital admission, I have been staying at his house on my own so that I can visit him in hospital and bring him clean clothes etc. The hospital is 45 minutes away.
Even if he does get home, I can see him in and out of hospital which is going to be hard with the constant travelling up & down. He lives by the coast so a three hour drive can be 5 hours in the summer! I am in between jobs so that means I can be on hand to help but I can’t be with him all the time.
The ideal solution would be to move him closer to me and my family, and he either rents an assisted living flat or he goes into a nursing home. He can self fund without selling his house. He only has my Mum’s sister living nearby, other than that there is no one. Mum & Dad didn’t integrate with the community when they moved and only socialised with Mum’s sister and husband but Dad does have a few friends near me.
What do I need to consider if we try to move him. Would I need consent from his medical team? What order should we do things in? Is it just too late and we’ve missed the window of moving him due to his health?
He has always been reluctant to move closer, partly because he considered the health care better where he was. He does have an excellent cardiac nurse at his local hospital but his GP has been terrible. They were awful with Mum too. They are part of the reason why he has ended up in hospital. He saw 3 GP’s over 6 weeks and not one of them told him to go to A&E and by then his edema was so severe, the cardiac nurse was absolutely horrified at the state he had ended up in when she saw him.
Sorry for the long post. Any advice would be so welcome as I feel a bit overwhelmed. I want to be there for Dad but the distance is making it very difficult.