The project begins

This blog will describe our ongoing efforts to provide a comfortable and safe home for our father to live in.

So that you can understand the problems we will have to overcome, here's a brief history explaining how we got here.

Our father was a fit and young 67 year old at the turn of the millennium. Suddenly he was struck with meningitis which was undiagnosed for over the week.

The result was that he was to stay in a coma (level 3 on the glasgow scale) for 72 days, during which other errors led to other life threatening illnesses.

Despite having almost no chance of living he survived.

He had suffered brain damage and was initially unable to walk. But with the immense efforts and love of our mother he recovered the ability to walk and many of his faculties and eventually re-passed his driving test.

Unfortunately his condition deteriorated for unknown reasons and with no help from the medical establishment this has remained a mystery. The result was he became increasingly unsteady on his feet, and relied on the patience and care of our mother.

Two and a half years ago our mother was diagnosed with leukaemia, and on September 7th 2007, after a brave, brave battle, our mother died aged 69.

And now .... what to do?

We want our father to live in his own home, as independently as possible. All of these illnesses have been a burden to all of us, and we too need to resume some normality in our lives.

This project, project M (M for Maggie), describes what we have done, are doing, and will do to make this happen. There must be thousands of other families with this problem or worse. Maybe this project will provide some guidance, and maybe someone can help to guide us.

In memory of an amazing person, our mother.