When caring duties become burdensome
FILE
What you need to know:
- Attempted murder: Christine Houston was sent to a secure hospital after being found guilty of attempted murder
Christine Houston, 66, a retired pharmacist, looked after her seriously disabled husband, Stewart, for years. Finally, the demands of round-the-clock care and mental stress became too much and she tried to kill him.
Weeks after telephoning police to say she wanted to suffocate her wheelchair-bound husband, Mrs Houston tightened a cravat around his neck. Houston was saved when a delivery driver happened to knock at the door of the couple’s house in Chester-le-Street, County Durham.
The police found ligature marks on Houston’s neck and burst blood vessels in his eyes. His wife said: “I tried to kill him, I want him dead.”
Houston, 56, has muscular dystrophy, a seriously debilitating condition. He said his wife was usually “as gentle as a lamb”. But her threats to harm him were not picked up by authorities.
Prosecuting QC Jamie Hill said the couple had been married 28 years. “She had strongly held religious beliefs which meant she felt could not leave him.”
A local Member of Parliament, Dave Anderson, called for better support for carers. Anderson himself has lost 10 relatives to muscular dystrophy and he said, “Carers can feel terribly isolated.”
Christine Houston was sent to a secure hospital after being found guilty of attempted murder.
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More than two million people have now seen the moment that Joanne Milne recovered her hearing and wept with joy. As reported here last week, Joan, deaf from birth and subsequently sight-impaired, too, had ear implants inserted in her head. Her mother filmed the moment they were turned on and Joanne heard a nurse speak for the first time.
A friend, Tremayne Crossley, posted the emotional video online and it has since been seen by 2.3 million people around the world, that number increasing by the day. Joanne was invited onto ITV’s “This Morning” programme and spoke of her rare condition, Usher Syndrome, which caused her to lose her sight as an adult.
Several celebrities have congratulated her on recovering her hearing and Joanne is hopeful that the video will encourage other disabled people to keep fighting.
Another video which has gained much attention was made by John Walsh when he went for a walk in the northern coastal town of Tynemouth. He was rambling with his children past the town’s long- abandoned swimming pool at the edge of the sea. “Glancing down, I saw a couple dancing by the waves,” he said. “I just thought, ‘How romantic!’”
He filmed the silent dance and posted it online. The identities of the lovers remain unknown.
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I often wondered during my (happily rare) hospital visits why I was always being asked my name and date of birth. Now I know.
At the Antrim Area Hospital in Northern Ireland, medics inserted a tube into the wrong patient. The tube was threaded through the nose, down the throat and into the stomach before staff realised they had the wrong person.
I used to scoff at stories about surgeons cutting off the wrong leg or removing an appendix from a man with a broken leg. Now I’m not so sure.
The health trust which runs the Antrim hospital released a memo instructing x-ray porters to ensure a nurse signs out the correct patient before they are allowed to leave the ward. Further, radiographers and their assistants must positively identify the patient before any intervention is performed.
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A group of dads were getting sentimental about their families, discussing how their children had grown up under their care. One question was, “Did you take your son to the pub for his first drink?”
Joe said he certainly had and he remembered it well. “I bought my son a bitter beer, but he didn’t like it, so I drank it myself. He didn’t like lager either, so I had to have that, too. It was the same with stout and wine so by the time we got to the whisky, I could hardly push the pram.”
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A young man was coming out of church on Christmas morning when the minister pulled him aside and said, “Why don’t you join the army of the Lord?” “But I’m already in the army of the Lord,” the man said.
“In that case, why do I only see you at Christmas and Easter?” “Ah,” said the man, “that’s because I’m in the secret service.”
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The Lord’s Prayer – 66 words; Archimedes’s Principle – 67 words; the Ten Commandments – 179 words; US Declaration of Independence – 1,300 words; European Union regulations on the sale of cabbages – 26,911 words.
