The first trip we made of course was to Hengelo, where Bernt’s mum lives. This is almost a two hour drive from Velsen, when the traffic is good. Like Melbourne and lots of other place, traffic is getting busier everywhere, and with bad traffic you could easily double the travel time. Luckily we were seldom affected by traffic because we could pick our time of travel. This was extra important because Annabelle didn’t travel well anymore. We had to plan our trips around Annabelle’s sleep: more than once she got so upset and screamed so much that we had to stop the car and let her have a tantrum outside.
It was really good to see mama, but she got quite a bit older in the past few months since Bernt last saw her. She’s completely confined to a wheelchair now, and is becoming more and more forgetful. She still recognised us, although at one instance in August she thought I was somebody else: ‘No, that’s not Bernt’, she said to the nurse.
Mama has the best 24-hour care imaginable. There are 6 nurses on rotating shifts, and they’re all really good. Thanks to them mama is looked after in a way that a nursing home could never provide.
Mama has probably been having a few TIA’s in the past months. They are Transient Ischemic Attacks, where the blood supply to a part of the brain is interrupted for a while. The symptoms are stroke-like, but last less than a day.
On August 8, the day after papa would’ve turned 80, mama had quite a severe TIA. She seemed mostly paralysed on one side and in such a bad shape that one nurse wasn’t enough to get her in- and out of bed. Mama could also barely talk anymore.
Because it looked so serious we decided to have the last sacraments administered to mama. We were near Birmingham in England at the time, and received a call from Gerben around 9pm. We packed up the campervan and drove through the night so we could be there.
Mama did recover quite well though: it was a case of three steps back and two forward.
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