Please help Hlif get back to Iceland to see Mum

My beautiful friend and precious (ex) sister in law Kat has asked me to share my story about my mum and her illness, so here it goes.. 




Mum was diagnosed with early onset of Alzheimer’s in November 2019, at the age of 59.

After the devastating news she suffered extreme distress, confusion, anxiety and manic episodes. Mid last year she was placed in a daycare facility for Alzheimer’s sufferers and the family was hopeful that this would help settle her and give her some relief from the ongoing mania that the early stages of the disease were causing, but she was becoming unmanageable at home. She had to be placed in a full time rest bite with professional care. The doctors suggested that she would benefit from trialing different medications and in November last year she was hospitalised. I haven’t been able to speak to her since, she was either too drugged or too confused to hold a conversation.  Unfortunately the nature of the disease made it incredibly hard to find medication that made any difference to her state and the doctors were shocked at how quickly she was deteriorating. She has been in hospital ever since with very limited visitation due to Covid. Only recently after receiving the vaccine she is allowed regular visitors and little outings. She has now lost over 20kg and her recognition of even the closest family members has almost completely faded. Her speech and ability to eat is almost gone but she still has mobility to walk and enjoyes  getting out in in the fresh air. 

 




As soon as mum was diagnosed I planned a trip home for July 2020, but then Covid hit in March2020. Flights were cancelled and the travel ban was on. I was made redundant in July and with the jobkeeper taken off me I had no income. As a single mum, this in it self was a huge stress. Especially given it was smack bang in the middle of a pandemic and while homeschooling my two boys. I was lucky to find a casual job a few weeks later. I applied for 3 travel exemptions, scraped together for flights and finally received the green light to travel in October. However that week the second wave of Covid hit and the International flights were halved. They also made the mandatory hotel quarantining at your own cost, adding a big amount to my travel cost. Everything got canceled again and the wait continued. 




Although I have been in constant contact with my family, spending countless of hours on FaceTime and waking up in the middle of the night for meetings with doctors. 

It’s been incredible hard not being able to be with my family and my mom while going through this traumatic time. If I’m given the opportunity now, I will do all it takes to get over there, despite the big cost, unpaid leave from work, travel and quarantine time, I’m determined to get to Iceland with the boys in July this year and have now been given the time off work to do so. I’m holding my head high and fingers crossed that this time we’ll make it over there! 

Sent from my iPhone