'He said he wished he was dead': Dying man's words to wife when NHS said it wouldn't pay for care
The wife of an 81-year-old man with stage 4 bowel cancer says she faces losing her home to pay for his care after the NHS said it would no longer fund his end-of-life care at a Shropshire care home.
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Mick Edwards from Highley was told in November that he had just months to live after being diagnosed with the disease more than a year earlier as it had become untreatable.
On December 6, after a year of nursing her husband, Diane Edwards, 69, finally had to admit her husband into Oldbury Grange care home in Bridgnorth after she was no longer being able to manage to look after him alone.
While she described the care her husband has been receiving at the home as 'excellent', NHS bosses have now written to the couple and told them the £1,200 weekly cost of Mick's care would no longer be funded by the NHS.
In a letter to the pair, NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin said funding would stop in July as Mr Edwards was found to need “social care” instead of palliative care, which the couple deny.
Diane Edwards said: “The NHS are saying that the care he needs is no longer 'medical' but is 'social' so they will no longer pay for it and are stopping funding it from July.”
She described the decision by the NHS as “cruel” and “unjust” and said she could not understand how they could describe the care Mick needed as 'social'.
