We caught up with busy mum of three, Heather Phillips to understand how Covid-19 and the restrictions of lock down affected her and her family.
Heather is mum to Emily (19), George (15) and Tom (13).
“Emily has Cerebral Palsy so at the beginning of the first lockdown we made the difficult decision to stand down all of Emily’s care, in total for a period of 16 weeks.
With the first lockdown, like most people we were scared of the unknown – we simply couldn’t take the risk of Emily becoming ill. But equally, as her parents we had to ensure we didn’t become ill, this would have meant Emily would have to be cared for by people unknown to her which is absolutely something we weren’t willing to risk.
During that period, Emily missed out on all of her essential therapies. Emily requires rebound therapy, hydrotherapy, and needs to attend various orthopaedic appointments too for her scoliosis and hips. But none of this was accessible during lockdown and the long periods the schools weren’t open.
Her tight muscles are treated using Botox injections into various muscle groups, but again this was another essential treatment that was no longer available.
It wasn’t clear to Emily why this had all changed, why she wasn’t allowed to go out and that her daily routine was now totally different.
It’s frustrating that Therapists aren’t classed as a medical need, in essence during lockdown they were put into the same class as beauty treatments and this just doesn’t seem right.
We have always said that we want Emily to be treated the same as our other children, we don’t expect any special treatment, but we do want her treatment to be fair and equal.
This was difficult for us during lockdown, as all of a sudden Emily’s medical needs didn’t seem to be factored in.
So essentially you became Emily’s full time carer overnight?
“Well more than that actually, I became her educator, her therapist, her nutritionist and looked after all of her personal care. She was able to participate in virtual yoga classes, which she did but it’s not the same.
As you know, I am pretty chipper most of the time but this did start to affect me. I felt like I was trying to do so much and not succeeding at any of it – I was surviving I guess rather than making head way on anything, and that does take a toll on your confidence and anxiety levels after a while. It was frustrating.
Emily doesn’t sleep well and sometimes needs to be turned several times at night to keep her comfortable and to help manage her dystonic muscle movements which are painful and interrupt her sleep pattern. I was trying to do all of this and home school George and Tom on very little sleep. I guess drained is how I would describe it – I felt drained.
So as we enter Mental Health Awareness Week how are things in The Philips Household?
We’ve had our second vaccines in the last few weeks, so this has helped ease some of our anxieties and things are slowly returning to normal.
Emily has returned to school and her carers have returned to the home, therapies (but not all) have restarted at school. Being able to see her friends and carers again has helped her enormously.
The boys are both back to school, although I’m sure if you asked them they would have been quite happy to continue being at home!”
After talking with Heather, it got me thinking – I am a mum of three boys myself, and like many, found the pressure of lockdown, home schooling and things like not being able to go to the gym all very hard. It definitely affected me. But in taking the time to catch up with Heather, it made me realise that actually I had it pretty easy.
We pass each other regularly when we are both out doing various school runs in the mornings and she never has anything but a beaming smile for me as we pass each other, despite the lack of sleep, the health concerns for her daughter and all the other stresses of lockdown. What a lady.
