Yesterday morning, I received the rather unwelcome news that my sister who lives on her own in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, was actually in hospital. I had been in FaceTime communication with her and her daughter over the weekend and knew that she was having great mobility problems. But now she is in hospital, there may well be a massive plus side to all of this as it now seems very likely that she be able to have a full assessment of her needs via the hospital ReAblement team and the OTs (occupational therapists for whom I have a great deal of regard after my experience with them over the years) My sister may well have been in A&E overnight and is now in a 'Acute Frailty' unit where she is being looked after. Later, I anticipate that I be in contact with her and get some much more up-to-date information about her actual medical condition and, perhaps more importantly, some pointers as to how my sister can receive some help in the years to come. I suspect that the key to all of this lies in 'Supported Living' where my sister could have a flat, perhaps attached to and run by a residential home unit, in which she can have a large measure of independent but assisted living not to mention other company before the point comes at which she needs full residential care. Meg and I made our visit down the hill this morning and enjoyed the best of the weather which was to turn much more rainy and blustery in the course of the afternoon. Upon our return, it was the occasion when the care workers calls around to do her 'sit' with Meg whilst I pop out to do some essential non-food shopping. I made a quick visit into town and was actually pretty successful in locating what I needed which was a new mop and bucket to apply to the kitchen floor. For some unaccountable reason, our existing mop and bucket have gone AWOL but the replacements were cheap enough. From the same store, I managed to purchase some spare toiletry cosmetics for Meg's benefit and then it was a case of getting home and cooking some lunch. It was pretty late in the day by now and rather too late to cook a full scale meal so I managed up one of my 'quickie' meals which was a tin of chunky vegetable soup served on a portion of rice. After lunch was successfully cooked and consumed, I managed to make a FaceTime call to my sister who is in a hospital in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. I was amazed to see that she had her own little room and when I made contact with her, one of her daughters was with her. I received the update on my sister's news which entailed, as we have all come to expect these days, a fairly long wait upon a hospital trolley as one journeys through the system and I think it was fairly early morning before she actually could be tucked up into bed. A series of investigative X-rays had been taken, the net effect of which was to rule out potential damage to a hip but which now revealed what may the result of 'historic damage' to a vertebra in the lumbar region of my sister's spine which might have been occasioned by a fall my sister experienced about a month ago. At least now, the occupational therapists and other paramedicals can make an in-depth assessment of whatever damage my sister may have done to herself and, much more importantly, what her capacities for independent living both in the short term and the medium term future. The rest of the family are also busy exploring care options and perhaps things will start to clarify a day or so ahead. Whilst I was chatting on the FaceTime call both to my sister and her daughter, I was given the excellent news that my niece had received the offer of a contract to write a couple of novels for Hodder and Stoughton who are, of course, top flight publishers. My niece shares her maiden name with Kate Atkinson who is a very famous author so evidently she has to write herself under a different name to avoid any potential confusion. A similar thing happened in Meg's family where a cousin who was an opera singer could not sing under the name of 'Gynneth Jones' but a similar name so that she did not get mistaken for her much more illustrious counterpart.
The scheduled call for Meg was actually quite late and, of course, the carers' teatime call was actually delayed by another 35 minutes so the actual teatime call came more than an hour and a half over the ideal time. But we were a little fortunate in that, upon scanning the TV schedules, we noticed an edition of 'Endeavour' (that we used to watch regularly in the evenings) actually scheduled with a late start in the afternoon. This helped to make a long afternoon so much more bearable and although we did not quite watch through to the end of the episode, it meant that the afternoon session was quite enjoyable.
The latest population estimates for the UK has our total population at 68.3 million is edging closer to 70 million. But the interesting thing about the latest demographic data is that there 16,3000 more deaths than there were births in the UK and it is, in effect, net immigration which is causing the UK population to grow. It appears that the rate at which babies are born (approx 1.5 children per couple) is way below the 2.2 million 'natural replacement' level. The figure of over 2 million is the figure it is because citizens who do have children have to produce a slight excess to compensate for those who, for whatever reason, fail to provide the 2 children that would be their own replacement. I have always found demography to be quite an interesting subject but with some quirks in it. For example, it is possible for the birth rate to be rising (above the 2.2 level) but if the underling population base is smaller than it was, then the population as a whole may be falling. Conversely, it is possible for the population to be rising if the birthrate is falling but the underling population base is quite large i.e. there are more people around to produce a higher quantum of babies. We had a course in what was called 'Social Statistics' at university and these basic elements of demography were quite interesting parts of the course as a whole. We also learnt, for example, how the Census and other large scale social surveys were conducted and after our university course, both Meg and myself were enumerators for the 1971 decennial census.
© Mike Hart [2024]