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Unfortunately eyesight and reactions tend to worsen let alone hearing as you age.  In our experience with one set of parents - only one drove and that unfortunately was the one who had everything wrong with his eyes in old age and had to give up driving. So it was taxis and hospital transport for years until we started to help by accompanying.  It can be a long way to walk when finding one's way through hospitals in itself is a trek along a coloured line and drop off points and Blue Badge spaces are hard to find.  Wheelchairs were never at the entrance and I remember having to walk the length of several floors before finding one.  The seats at the entrance while I did this were often filled with individuals - patients, visitors and staff - smoking.  The elderly population is growing fast and it seems that not only are there not enough alternatives for getting them to and from appointments but many have never ever planned for getting older and being less independent.  There is no hospital transport in many places and that is often not suitable for the elderly or less well when it can take hours and hours going round the houses delivering everyone else in order to get them home. Those particular parents never seemed to think it was worth their while learning how to use the mobile phone we gave them after all our research in choosing a talking one and setting it up with shortcuts to particular numbers.  One parent did all the seeing and the other all the hearing - and that worked quite well for them - until there was only the one.  By that time it was definitely too late to learn how to use the requested mobile phone (the respite care home only seemed to have one phone line and that was constantly in use- and they didn't have enough staff... Not enough staff - something that seems to be a problem everywhere - and this is despite all the questions that had been asked beforehand and all the assertions that there was an en suite shower room (pointless when there isn't the help necessary)...  Everyone also all had TVs in their own rooms and those in the communal day room were those who did not speak - a terrible disappointment for a blind person who wanted to talk to others. We should all try and take the greatest care of our hearing and eyesight by attending all our regular appointments and wearing any necessary hearing aids and glasses - particularly as they now reckon that not doing so can lead to dementia.  I don't know why this took them so long as they have said for years that MEMORY IS MULTI-SENSORY - as every good teacher should know!

Philippa Bond ● 28d