Mirror Mirror
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley October 10, 2023
Author David Allott
Distributor: Blackwells
ISBN: 9781399935166
Publisher: Hashtag Press
Release Date: September 2023
Website: https://blackwells.co.uk/
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“The true cost of anything is what we choose to pay for the alternative.”
Written about the National Health System in Britain, much of what David Allott says in Mirror Mirror resonates worldwide with Government funded health systems. His story of the challenges of trying to get a fair deal for his wife, or rather what she is entitled to, could be considered in the truest of contexts a ‘call to arms’.
Facing a terrible personal dilemma Allott and his family ran head first into confrontation with the National Health System (NHS) as his beloved wife Margaret, slowly moved from being slightly forgetful to Alzheimer’s Disease. He attempted to utilize what should have been financial help and support through the various sections of the NHS, set up for the purpose of aiding and assisting those who are unable to do so themselves.
Never for one moment did he doubt the help needed was to be almost impossible to obtain, or that it would take him a number of years to do so, as well as coping with the sheer frustration of dealing with a system that most people working within its framework, such as Doctors, Social Workers and other professional practitioners really do not understand, or if they do, misconstruing the wording and the use of the criteria.
Such was his level of frustration and disbelief he began to keep records, write notes, employed a Lawyer to help him with dealing with the NHS aspect of the care required, even going so far as to ‘demand’ a hearing with the various people who assess mental health patients suffering within the dementia framework.
His frustration lead to the writing of Mirror Mirror in the hope that people from all walks of life may use it as a guidebook to finding their way through a massive, challenging and misleading system, in a far easier way then he did, and that whoever reads it will take issue with their own treatment and be prepared to take action through their local Members of Parliament.
Should they be from within the NHS System, his hope is that they will further investigate what he has detailed very carefully and attempt to fully understand what it is they are assessing, which in his very careful, thorough research and sad personal experience opinion, they do not.
Mirror Mirror is a deeply personal story of one woman’s decline into the tragedy of Alzheimer’s Disease and the sad reality of how it affects the family in every context. That the support had to be gained through shear persistence, hard work and frustrated distress, is appalling.
The final chapters set out many ways to help take action; to begin to ask questions rather than just accept what is or is not told, and to obtain a Badge to wear, to support the call for change, transparency and honesty within the NHS. – something which is a long time overdue according, to David Allott!