Family Matters

[Stanley]

That's sad but in the great scheme of things, good news. Once you have reached that stage death is a release.... If my assessment of Mrs Tiz is correct she won't be hit too hard, she has been grieving for her mother for a long time now. You've both reached the end of a long slog and apart from tidying the inevitable loose ends up you can now have a relax and concentrate on each other.... I wish you well.

[Tizer]

Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts. Mrs Tiz is going to High Wycombe today for a couple of days to meet up with her sister and their family to make arrangements. It'll also give them time to grieve together.

[Tizer]

The two sisters thought they'd got the funeral date sorted last week but when they tried to register Mum's death they got `bounced' - the registrar wouldn't accept the medical certificate and said a coroner's report would be needed. Apparently the doctor who signed off the cert should have known this and warned us. He had to answer a question about when he had last attended to Mum and wrote `2013', which is true although she has been seen since by other doctors. But because he signed it and hadn't seen her within the last specified number of weeks (something like 8 or 10 weeks) the coroner needs to be involved. (She died in the nursing home, not in hospital.) So now we've got a funeral organised but haven't yet got permission to go ahead! They've got an appointment with the registrar for this Wednesday and we hope it's been sorted by then. It makes you wonder what else the doctor should know but doesn't know.

[PanBiker]

When our Dan died in the RTA the coroner issued us with an interim death certificate so that we could bring him home and sort the funeral. We did have to wait for the results of the postmortem though before we were issued with a release form for the undertaker.

[Tizer]

Today the GP who has been seeing Mum more recently has come back from his summer holidays and demanded that a post-mortem be done because `the death was not expected'. We'd been told it would all be sorted by tomorrow for the new appointment with the registrar but the post-mortem won't be until Thursday. We asked if there were any suspicious circumstances about her death but it seems not. I'd have thought many of the deaths from heart attack and stroke were `not expected' but they don't seem to trigger a post-mortem. Sister's getting stressed out by all the bureaucracy just when her daughter's about to have her third child. There was a false alarm last week and sister had to take over looking after the other two kids as well as doing her work and everything else while daughter made a dash to the hospital!

[PanBiker]

Not really what you need at this time Tiz. When Sally's mum died recently that was from and unexpected cardiac event. She had made it to hospital though from the care home and had been seen by the paramedics, A&E crash team, IC ward doctor and cardiologist. No inquest required just a slight delay in getting the death certificate issued as two doctors were required to agree and sign off on cause of death.

[Stanley]

I suppose we need safeguards but from what you say Tiz this is down to incompetence. First on the part of the doctor who should have known two years ago wasn't a sufficient answer and second, you would expect the undertaker to have known exactly what had to be in place before setting a date for the funeral. It all goes to support my theory that simple incompetence is on the increase in all walks of life and as in this case, it's the innocent that suffer.

[Stanley]

I just wanted you to know that I am thinking about those of you who have been bereaved recently. You are not out of mind. Stick in there, it all gets better as time passes even though you never forget. Life has a habit of taking over!

[Tizer]

Thanks!

[PanBiker]

We received a letter yesterday addressed to our Dan at this address. It was from a debt collection agency based in Leeds who had an outstanding amount from Vodaphone of £58.00 passed on to them for collection. Its 15 years since Dan actually lived at this address so after collecting my thoughts I rang them up. The operator asked for my name which I gave along with the reference number on the letter, he quickly pointed out that I was not the account holder and asked why I was ringing. I explained the circumstance that Daniel was killed in a RTA nearly three years ago and asked why Vodaphone were chasing this debt? now. I added that as far as I was aware all outstanding accounts were settled two and a half years ago. As a further check at the time we passed all of Dan's paperwork onto a solicitor who wrote to all existing creditors. I do remember that Vodaphone insisted on seeing a death certificate which was duly supplied before they would close off the account. It was six months after Dan's death that the solicitor was happy that all accounts were clear.

The guy in Leeds (Ali) was very good, he put me on hold while he checked with a colleague and after a short delay returned to tell me they were writing the debt off and would inform Vodaphone to that effect. He gave me his extension number on the off chance I needed to contact them again. He said I might receive further correspondence already in the pipeline which I should ignore.

[Tizer]

I sometimes, surprisingly, feel sympathy for the debt collectors. They have to deal with the many stupid mistakes made by companies who don't properly update their multitude of databases and fail to cross check before sending details on to them. I've mentioned before how debt collectors chased us for a claimed £5 debt (5 pounds!) to Demon Internet until we asked them to show us evidence that we owed anyone money.

[Edit... later]When I related Ian's story to Mrs Tiz she reminded of what happened when her father went into the nursing home. With her, power of attorney role she paid off his Virgin broadband and cable account, explained how he has dementia and was now in a nursing home and instructed them to close the account. Knowing how these companies don't always close the account when instructed, she asked them to confirm it was terminated, which they did. Some time later they started sending bills to him again and demanding payment. After our intervention and their `investigation' they eventually admitted that they had `not completely closed the account'.

When I worked in a big publishing company in the early 1990s all the customer accounts and associated data where on one big, central database. Any of the employees who had the appropriate authority could open, modify or terminate this information on the one database. I get the impression that in companies now the customer's data is spread far and wide through many databases, perhaps even individual users' databases, which is why it's so hard for the customer to get such information changed once and for all.

[Stanley]

Tiz, from what my daughter Janet has told me about these large databases that have grown through the years, and she has a lot of experience in the field of transferring very sensitive databases to new systems, this is a very real problem even in areas where accuracy and security are absolutely vital. You have only to look at failures in systems like RBS etc. where different systems have been combined and transferred over the years with insufficient investment being put into the process to realise that the possibility of corruption duplication and even incorrect input in the first place is common. The most common area of error seems to be when systems are combined and the data can suffer. When she did one particular sensitive police database she met initial resistance when she said that in order to be safe, the data had to be extracted and then the old system physically destroyed before re-installing the data on a completely new system. Imagine the reaction of the board of a company where their risk assessors and IT department insisted on this.... The agency she was advising took notice in the end and followed her advice. I particularly remember that she also insisted that the data should not be transferred directly form the old to the new system. It had to be extracted to external memory, checked and physically transferred by hand to the new system to avoid the remote chance of any corruption in the process.

[Tizer]

I particularly remember that she also insisted that the data should not be transferred directly from the old to the new system. It had to be extracted to external memory, checked and physically transferred by hand to the new system to avoid the remote chance of any corruption in the process.

That's similar to the problems I used to encounter as a publisher. Almost every author would submit a manuscript in MS Word with lots of fancy formatting but I'd have to copy and dump it into a simple text editor then edit and typeset from scratch to avoid corruption. And it wasn't because I worked in Linux - you couldn't trust one version of Word to transfer to another without being corrupted. Big tables of data were the worst - I once had to deal with a single table of data covering 10 pages!

[Stanley]

That brings back memories of the problems I had when transferring large blocks of text copied from Word documents into text for publishing on Lulu. It was you who solved the problem for me by introducing me to the technique of 'washing' text by putting it in a text editor and editing there before embedding in the text for the publisher.

[Tizer]

Mrs Tiz's dad seems to have a marvellous appetite regardless of suffering from Parkinson's and vascular dementia and having to move about in a wheelchair. The family wheeled him into the pub next door to the nursing home recently and he enjoyed a big two course meal, washed down with a pint of Rebellion. He wanted apple pie for afters and couldn't make his mind up when they asked him if he wanted custard or cream with it. To solve the problem, when they brought the pie they gave him two little jugs, one filled with cream, the other with custard. He ate the pie and the contents of both jugs!

[Stanley]

When I worked for Richard Drinkall the cattle dealer we occasionally had a cow that was either recovering from some ailment or just generally doing badly, this made them not fit for sale. I used to take them to a man called Hargreaves Haworth at Fernhurst Farm in Blackburn. The arrangement was that he would doctor them back into health and get the profit from the milk while he had them. After a month or two with Hargie they were sleek and fit and in peak condition.



I asked him once what his secret was and he said it was simply to tempt them with different foods until he got them eating again and then gradually get them on to the same diet as the other beasts. His wife Minnie was the best baker in Blackburn and never went out of the house without a wig on.....
So, on that evidence Mrs Tiz's father is in good shape!

[LizG]

Well, Mum has defied all the odds and reached her 89th birthday. We took her home to her own house for a great family get together on Sunday with almost all family members, partners and children. She was surprisingly good, with almost no 'confused' moments. A good experience for all the great grandchildren, they were lovely with her.

We've had some very ordinary experiences taking her home so it was good to have a relatively stress free visit. (The last time she had a minor stroke).

[Cathy]

A lovely memory for many generations of the family Liz.

[Stanley]

It's so good for the kids to be able to have confidence in continuity and that's what grandparents and great-grandparents can give. I often think tha t this is the biggest gift I can give them and do my bast to stay the course as long as possible. I'm sure that your mother did a lot of good simply by being there.... Long may it continue! Just think what she has seen in her life.....

[LizG]

When we take the kids to visit in the nursing home the response from the residents never ceases to amaze me. Overwhelmingly they all want to interact with them in whatever way they are able. Arms are outstretched for whatever contact they can get, and children can be very kind. There was a little boy there the other day who was about 3. He was 'playing' with one of the residents, no relation. it did your heart good to see the response.

[Stanley]

You get the same response if you take a dog in to visit them..... Many had pets and miss them....

[Cathy]

Oh that's almost too sad ...

[Stanley]

When I take Jack onto the Green to empty himself there is almost always someone stood watching through a window. I always wave to them and wonder what's going through their minds. I know that care homes are the best we can do but it makes me sad as well Cathy.....

[Cathy]

The person watching you thru the window is probably watching to see if you pick up Jacks deposit Stanley.

[Stanley]

Could be Cathy and they won't be disappointed, I am one of the good guys!