One client, 91-year-old Alan Gregg who is recovering from cancer and has chronic arthritis, said he has four care visits a day.<\/p>\n
“The women are so good to me, I like a wee bit of company and, yes, to some extent they keep me alive.”<\/p>\n
Alan may have a stoma and a catheter, and require personal care, but he still considers himself independent.<\/p>\n
“I worked in the Navy most of my life, so being independent at this age is important. And I am still able to read and lift weights.”<\/p>\n
But it is challenging work for the likes of Bronagh and Kellie, from paying for fuel and keeping their cars road worthy.<\/p>\n
Bronagh said politicians and officials in the Department of Health do not appreciate the job that carers do in keeping people at home and out of hospital.<\/p>\n
“We just don’t feel appreciated. We aren’t paid enough,” she added.<\/p>\n
It is a view Liz understands. She said more people like Freda in Northern Ireland would allow more people like her to live at home and save the health service money.<\/p>\n
She is still coming to terms with how her life has altered, and the acceptance of her husband’s departure for a care home.<\/p>\n
“He loved the garden and walking in the countryside but had started to wander off, I miss him but have accepted our lives have changed,” Liz said.<\/p>\n
“I still have a little bit of wit \u2013 I am fine and I just tend to write a lot of things down,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One client, 91-year-old Alan Gregg who is recovering from cancer and has chronic arthritis, said he has four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-583127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}