Coleen Nolan has opened up about the heartbreaking decision she and her family had to make by putting her mum into a care home.
The Loose Women star’s mum Maureen, died in 2007 aged 81 after a five-year battle with dementia. Coleen and her five siblings were forced to put Maureen in a care home after it got too dangerous for her to be left by herself.
And this week, Coleen recalled the vile trolling she and her family received after putting Maureen into the care home, with Coleen revealing they ‘cried every night’ over the decision.
Coleen Nolan on ‘hardest decision’
On Loose Women on Tuesday (April 28) Coleen was joined by Ruth Langsford, Judi Love and Janet Street-Porter. The conversation soon turned to the topic of “have you experienced care home guilt?”
Coleen then bravely opened up about her own experience. She said: “I think it’s probably the hardest decision me and my family made with my mum.
“You know, we looked after her as long as we could, you know, between us. She wanted to stay in a sheltered accommodation, but then that became where it was just too dangerous.
“You know, she was leaving electric kettles on a gas hob and not even noticing, and my brother would go around and there was smoke, and then I’d have her during the day, and then my sister would have her at night.”
Coleen went on: “More and more and more it was getting really, really difficult. You know, she’d get up at three in the morning and we’d have to put double locked doors because she’d think it was daytime and just wander, you know, all those things.”
‘We were doing the best that we could’
She then recalled a time when her mum gave daughter Ciara “sweets” but they were Maureen’s tablet. Coleen said: “Now luckily Ciara was the child out of all three of my children that never ever put stuff in her mouth. If that had been the boys, they’d have eaten them, but she never did. I was like: ‘Oh, we’ll save them for Grandma’.
“It was just getting more and more. She just needed more and more care, and we were working, and we had young kids, and we were doing the best that we could, especially my sisters, my other sisters who lived there at the time. It was the hardest decision ever to even suggest.”
Coleen went on to reveal that she and her siblings let their mum choose the home she was moving into.
“The one that we thought was going to be perfect for her because it was all super modern, and it was gorgeous, and it was newly built, she walked in and hated it. She picked one that we wouldn’t have picked but it was her choice. She didn’t quite understand what was happening, to be fair,” Coleen explained.
Coleen on ‘crying every night’ over decision
Coleen went on to reveal the vile trolling she received about her putting her mum into a care home. She said: “Now, still living with all this guilt, I cannot tell you the amount of people that trolled us over it. Like, how dare you? Your mum’s brought up all eight of you, and not one of you can look after.
I don’t sleep at night. None of us do. We cry every night
“Yeah, we could. We could all look after my mum, but it wouldn’t be safe. She got the really aggressive form. She had no idea where she was. She needed 24-hour supervision.
“We still got this guilt, and then we got loads of lovely people, but the amount of people were going, ‘how can you sleep at night?’ and I was like, ‘grand, I’ll tell you how… I don’t sleep at night. None of us do. We cry every night because we’ve had to make this decision.'”
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