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Episode 10 – The Value of Lasting Powers of Attorney

Hi, everybody, it’s been a while. I’ve been away from the podcast for a bit as my mum died in February. It has not been an easy time and I have tried to carry on as usual, as much as possible, but I think we can call agree that the podcast was an area that could take a pause.

I’m starting to get back into the swing of things and it feels right that the first episode of the podcast is focused upon Lasting Powers of Attorney. I am not an expert in this area, but I am sharing what my personal experience was of having these in place for both of my parents, when tragedy struck.

The key takeaways:

  • A health LPA was invaluable when my mum was in critical condition, but there are limits to use for my dad who has Parkinsons and Dementia and is still deemed to have capacity
  • A financial LPA was invaluable for both of my parents and has, in our situation, been easier to enforce than the health LPA
  • Having the LPAs in place meant that I could quickly take over my parent’s affairs and whilst going through one of the most horrible experiences of my life, I could make sure that my mum passed in a comfortable environment and ensure my dad received the care that he needs. They helped an unbearable situation, to be a bit more bearable.

This episode is my personal story, it is not advice. However, I do wholeheartedly advocate that everyone at least consider the merits of putting LPAs in place.

Next time Alan will be back with me and we will be covering how fatty liver disease and protection insurance work.

Remember, if you are listening to this as part of your work, you can claim a CPD certificate on our website, thanks to our sponsors PlannerX.

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Kathryn Knowles  00:11

Hi everybody. Today, I am back after quite a break on the podcast. It is season 11, Episode 10, and I have some personal experiences to share and to look at in regards to the value of lasting powers of attorney, this is the practical protection podcast.

 

Kathryn Knowles  00:42

So some of you will know this. I imagine most of you won’t. In February of this year, 2026 so two months ago, just a little over two months ago, my mum died. I’m going to go into some of the details. I won’t go through everything, because not everything is relevant to what we’re discussing today, but I might go off a little side tangent in regards to her situation and what we experienced a couple of months ago. So to sort of start things off, my mom had two strokes on the third of February, and one of these was a major stroke, very, very major stroke. She then had a third stroke 10 days later, and died on the 17th of February, so exactly two weeks after the very initial strokes. And as I’m sure you can imagine, my usual podcast routine, my usual work went very out the window, along with other things as well that all took a definite back step priority in terms of, while she was with us, obviously looking after her as best as I could and being with her as much as I could. And then once she had passed, making sure that everything was sorted. It was, it was, it was up to me, pretty much, to sort out the estate and to make sure that my dad is okay.

 

So the reason for that is that not only have I been coping with my mom passing, and there was so much administration work, it’s crazy, but she was also the full time care for my dad, so he has Parkinson’s and dementia, and I’ve needed to try and coordinate everything for him, and trying to obviously make everything as as smooth as possible for him to be able to stay at home, and for him to have carers and things like that. It hasn’t been the nicest of times. I’m sure anybody who’s lost a parent will will know that it brings a lot of emotions, lots of different types of emotions. For me, it will probably sound a bit strange some of my emotions. In regards to it, I was incredibly close to my mom, very, very close, so it has been a huge Knock, and she lives. We lived on the same street in the same town. It’s really not that far away. It takes maybe a minute to walk to her house from mine, and we always saw each other, and she was very, very close to my children as well. So obviously very big shock for them that suddenly grandma, who they saw almost every day, suddenly wasn’t there and playing with them and things like that. But we’ve luckily been able to focus, and we’ve really focused on the positive memories and and it might seem strange in the way that I say it, but in some ways, the way that she passed made it easier for us, in some ways, to process the grief. And I know that grief is going to keep hitting me, but obviously, in terms of everything she had the major strokes we had that very, very minimal window of hoping that things would improve. She did. Then become lucid again.

 

She was communicating, not through speech, but through, you know, her eyes, her facial expression, and she could move her left arm and and there was some lovely moments where she really, really really reached out engaged, and, you know, was able to use our hands to kind of signal to us what she wanted, and also to show to us that she loved us. And I have to share it and keep it for prosperity, for everything, but say, like the first day when she was able to actually communicate with us again, in her own way, is that she kept, she kept yanking at my top of cardigan that I had on with the like, a little bow, and I couldn’t understand that I was saying to the nurse, I was saying to my husband, Alan, said Tom, what she wants to know she wants what she won’t. He was like, take your thing off, just in case. For some reason the ribbons freaking her out. So obviously, because why would the ribbon freak her out? But you just, you never know. In those situations, and you’ve got this very hospitalized sterile environment, there’s machines, massive machines everywhere, beeping.

 

You just like, I just, you lose kind of sense of what’s going on. And I took it off, and she kept on pulling at me and pulling at me and and eventually I just said to Mum, I don’t know what you want, because I first was obviously frustrated as well. So I don’t know what you want, Mom, I don’t know what you want. I was like, but I’m just gonna lay on you and cuddle you, because that’s the last thing I can think of. And that is actually what she wanted. So there she was, bless her, having had two strokes, not able to speak, obviously, in her own way, she would have been quite scared by what was going on. And what she wanted was for me to lay on her so she could have a cuddle. And what she then did was a very, very mum thing was that she then stroked and patted my back for a few minutes, and just closed her eyes and was content doing that. And I tried to get up again, and she yanked me back down again to become mum. And obviously, it’s lovely to remember that. But then after a little bit, obviously she started to not be

 

Kathryn Knowles  05:41

able to communicate as much, and it became much, and it became quite clear that things were going the other way. And there was lots and lots of like, obviously, her faculties and everything weren’t as they should be. And we knew that it was coming and what was coming, and because it was happening over two weeks, and there was so much going on, it was so intense, because my sister lives in Italy, sister lives in Italy, so it was getting her back, starting out a flight, you know, there was, there was never a moment of stop. It was literally, wake up, get to the hospital. That was, you know, an hour and a half away, you know, virtually every day and and then back again, just trying to as well, trying to be here. So have some normality for the children, which is what my mum would have wanted. But by the end, and we will get into also the last, especially once she’d had the third stroke, and I’ll explain it a bit more when I talk about the LPA, it got to a point, and I know not everybody would agree with this, so if you don’t agree with me, obviously I appreciate that.

 

That would be your opinion and but I would just ask that not to have any negative messages, if that’s okay, because this is a situation that we faced, and obviously we were in the emotion of it and the situation of seeing it from the very start of the stroke right through to the end. But towards the end, we were saying to her that she had to go and that we obviously we loved her, but it really was her time. And I think having it over those two weeks, it gave us that chance to obviously have to come to terms with the most massive shock that we could have ever expected, but it gave us time to process and almost grieve before it actually happened. So I’ll, I’ll chat through what happened with me and the lasting powers of attorney, so you will get some of the personal story as well. I think it’s important to hear some of that as you then might hear some of the decisions that were made as we went along, and go from there. So let’s start.

 

So third of February, my dad, well, first of all, my mom had sent me a message that didn’t make any sense. And as I’m sure you can all imagine where I’m going with this, I sent her, as the typical sarcastic child, a message back, saying, Are you having a stroke? Which, of course, yeah, she was. And she would laugh about that. I have to say, she would really laugh about that. You know, in hindsight, she would. But then, like my dad rang me. He never really rings me. Always does by mistake, any video called me. So I was laughing away, sort of saying, Dad, you’ve booked dialed me, you know, and everything. And fortunately, he’d managed to turn the camera so I could see Mum and see she was obviously not well and on the floor, and me and Alan got there, and obviously we were the ones providing her with the support, like the first aid and stuff, until the ambulance arrived, and then, luckily, it wasn’t too long a wait. It was a wait, but it wasn’t too long away, but it was obvious what was happening. And obviously, when they turned up, the first thing I did was say, I have lasting power of attorney. Well, obviously Bao saying this is what’s happening, and giving them all the symptoms that she’d experienced while we were there. I was then saying to them, as they were doing all the tests to see which hospital she needs to go to, I was very clear to say, I have a lasting power of attorney, so that they knew that, obviously, in terms of decisions and things like that, it was me to go to. And you know, it was very clear to them that my dad wasn’t the person that was going to be involved in that. And very luckily, my dad already had carers visiting him just in the morning, once once a day, and they luckily came and looked after him while we sorted everything for mum.

 

So obviously we knew things were very, very serious, because the two closest proper stroke units, in a sense, near us, the big ones, are an hour and a half an hour an hour and a half away, roughly an hour and a half, if you’ve taken all the traffic usually. And they basically said she needs to go there, but we can’t take her there. She won’t make it. We need to go to the local hospital, which obviously, straightaway, you then, know, wow, this is serious. And so went to the hospital, obviously, and collected her things. Obviously, started getting her overnight bag sorted, and to make sure, just in case, because I was just putting anything and everything in there that I could think of. And. And obviously got to hospital, and again, started repeating to everybody, because she was in the the A and E, just like repeating I have last name, have attorneys saying it to everybody, and everybody, just at this point, trusted because it was such a serious situation, and just completely trusted me, which was lovely that I wasn’t having to just immediately get involved. And started doing all that while they were again checking mom. I then went into certain areas, made sure that they had my contact details, not to ring my dad and and things like that, so that they could contact me. And again, the LP didn’t even really stand in at that point, you know, say I did have it, and I was telling them, but they just trusted me, which was really lovely. I don’t know

 

Kathryn Knowles  10:39

how much they meant to have done that, but I don’t care. I’m very, very grateful for them for doing that. And we then obviously had to go to hull the next day, which is where they decided she would go to. It was either hull or York. So they took her to hull, so we went through the next day. And again, I repeated to everybody as a just in case that we had the LPA. And I wasn’t asked for proof of it at any point. And I think probably at this stage in the grand scheme of things, everything was so serious that it was almost as if, is there any actual decisions to be made here. You know, at this point, it was just keeping her alive and also seeing where she would be in terms of recovery, you know, in terms of what they said, obviously, she developed hydrocephalus, which is the fluid and pressure on the brain, and establishing if that was going down, not going down, what her movements were, and things like that. And I say she could, after a couple of days, recognized that I was there. She could signal with her hands to me, hold my hand, squeeze my hand, things like that. She, at times, could move her left leg, but the entire right side of her body had unfortunately gone. And I did the things that you meant to do.

I read Sherlock Holmes to her. That’s our thing. Sherlock Holmes together, our detective book. So I would read that to her every time I went just short stories, so as not to overburden her, I would tell her things that were happening. We recorded voice messages from all the grandkids until my sister could get here. You know, we did voice video calls so she could hear and speak to her, obviously how much she loved her and and I massaged her every day massage the legs, just trying to get that feeling, or try and trigger something in her legs as much as I could. But unfortunately, the damage was really there. And then about seven so seven days later, ish, I got the call saying that they wanted to see me early in the morning, not so outside of usual visiting time, because the consultants needed to see me, which immediately, you know you get anything right, okay, and I know it’s coming. So I was just like, right? Is this talking about things like DNR, so do not resuscitate? And they’re like, yes, you need to come in and we need to chat through the options. So I was like, okay, and, and for me, it was, having the LPA was fantastic because obviously I knew that I had control, but it was also incredibly daunting. So for the LPA, the people who had the LPA, for my mom was myself and my husband.

 

My dad isn’t somebody that we put on, so we did the LPAs that’s in power of attorneys in 2018 as a as a preparation, because we knew, obviously, with my dad, how poorly my dad was at the time, that and his conditions will only progress, that we needed, really, to have these things in place. And it was something for my mom, for comfort for her and and again, that’s been a big part of the shock as well, is that horribly we all expected my dad to to be the person that would go first because of his health conditions. And obviously it’s been a very different situation. And but anyway, so that with the LPA, brilliant to have. But I would share as well that emotionally incredibly tough, because obviously, in this situation, and I know it’s obviously my situation, but I my dad, in a sense, wasn’t there. He can’t be. My sister wasn’t there to hand because she’s in a different country. But ultimately, and I was fine. Every single step of the way, I was fine, but the DNR part was the bit that got me, because ultimately it was my say so, and obviously I spoke to my sister, and we were both in agreement that with how she’d stopped progressing and how she actually seemed to be getting a bit worse, we were both in agreement that it would need to be a DNR, but it was me putting my voice And my signature and everything like that.

 

But it turned out, I went to see the consultants the next day, I think it was day eight, and they actually just told me they were putting a DNR on. They would completely ignore the L they basically said to me, you don’t need to worry about the emotion of having the LPA and all of this that’s hitting you right now. We are putting the DNR on because. The right thing to do, and that’s it. Now, I’m not sure technically, in terms of the LPA, whether that’s right or wrong. I’m sure some people who are technically far more savvy in that area, they mean the legal side of things, would know. But whether or not it was technically okay or not, for me, it was the right thing, it took a huge pressure and guilt off me, and I just sobbed. Obviously, I sobbed as we were talking through the situation. I was sobbed when they said I didn’t need to have the say, final say, so on the DNR, and it was really, really hard, but it was absolutely the right thing.

 

Kathryn Knowles  15:38

So two days later, day 10, she was moved to Scarborough, and they’d moved her back. Now they’d said to us that she’d started to, in a sense, improve in terms of her I forgot the name of it now, but it’s a consciousness scale. Now, I won’t go into all of it, but there was actually some errors in the transfer with my mum, in that she shouldn’t have been transferred, and it caused a lot of problems in terms of the issue of the death certificates and different things like that. There needs to be some investigations and things, but I won’t go into all of that. So overall, what I would say is the majority, I would say 95% of the care that she received from the medical professionals was beyond excellence. It was just a procedural I don’t even though there was an error in her transfer and when she should have been transferred, I don’t believe that it would have changed the ultimate outcome. But still tough, obviously. So she was transferred, and I was called and they said, like, we’ve sent your mom 20 minutes ago to Scarborough. And I was like, oh, okay, you know, kind of like, right, what’s going on? Because we were told that when she would leave, it would be to, like, a rehab ward or something. So it was very confusing. And there’s not a rehab world at Scarborough, like the, not the type that would be needed and and they were like, but we’ve lost the DNR paperwork. And I was like, Okay, right. So I was just, I said, I was like, Don’t worry, it’s fine. I’ll start at the hospital.

 

At this point in our minds, we thought, well, she must have started to show some improvement. Even though I’d seen her the day before and didn’t think she was as well. We were thinking she must have shown improvement for them to move her, for her to think that she can come back towards galbra. So then about 20 minutes after that, I got a phone call from a junior doctor at Scarborough hospital telling me that we all needed to get in because it was pretty much time and she was going. And so we got to scab as quickly as we could, and I managed to take my dad as well. So this entire time, my dad had been in a care home, and I had had to give them a copy of the LPA, and they knew me. They knew exactly our family situation, but for just the technicalities, so obviously I gave him the copy of it, and then everything was fine, so that they were just absolutely brilliant at making sure he was okay, so that I could focus on mom. So I’d got my dad, obviously took him to the hospital and and again, as we got there, they were like, Oh, well, she’s here. So, oh no, she’s in this place. So we went to that place. As we were there, they went, Oh, she’s actually in recess ward. And I immediately said, there’s a DNR. It was lost before she was transferred. Do not do it. It’s, it’s, she’s a DNR. I have LPA, and I was able to explain it to everybody again.

 

So some quick movements around to get things sorted. And they came back and they said, Well, look, she is in the resource ward. However, they’ve already decided that they wouldn’t do it because of how poorly she is. And I said, Well, I said, Thank God for that. And she came back up onto the ward. And it was around this time that there was these things brought to me where there was going to be an internal investigation and things like that. But at that point, the hospital did say, Look, can we just see the LPA? And I was like, absolutely. So obviously I gave them electronic copies. They just saw it on my phone, and it was brilliant, because then they just did everything with me, this book to me completely, and they complete. They went really above and beyond. So, like, we were just in the middle of, like a normal Ward, a six person Ward, and they completely closed us off from everybody. They even brought in like a camp bed for my dad, so he needs to rest a lot with the parks and so he could sleep. And the slept next to each other, holding hands, which was very, very sweet to see, because they’ve been married. Last year was their 50th wedding anniversary, and obviously saw see all this stuff was having with the LPAs and everything like that.

 

Then it was interesting, because up until this point, I almost felt like the LPA hadn’t really had that much. Had much of a thing, because it all just been such, like, right? Everybody answer that kind of thing. We need to get this all done and just whatever needs to happen, happens to I was suddenly told that the neurosurgeons wanted to send my mum back to home. Now what I forgot to mention at this point is that my mum actually had had a third stroke on her travel from Hult Scarborough, so on that 10th day, so when she’d arrived at the hospital, she was incredibly poorly, more so than we’d seen her. Any point beforehand, and they said, Oh, the neurosurgeons have checked and they think she should go back to hull. And I just looked at the doctor. And again, this might not be the same decision that all the listeners would make, but again, if there’s anybody who has, if you have positive comments, then please do feel free to comment and get in touch with me. But any kind of negativity I would I would greatly appreciate, if you disagree, not to comment to me about it. But the doctor said to me, they want to send her back to her. And I said, I have an LPA. Can I refuse? And they just looked at me. And they looked at me

 

Kathryn Knowles  20:34

really surprised, and they’re like, Well, if you want to. And I was like, I was like, the travel, the journey here this morning has given her a third stroke. I was like, it’s literally happened on this journey. She was not well enough to trans, be transferred. Now I said, If you travel, if you send her back, I’m convinced that she’s going to die on route to hull, and she won’t be with her family, whereas here, we all know what’s going to happen. At least here she’s got all of us, and she knows she’s surrounded by love. And I said, I won’t need to check with my sister. I need to check with my dad. But again, there was then that emotion of, well, I’m the one that has the final say. Soaks of the LPA legally, I spoke to my sister, who had been able to come back to England, but I’d had to go back due to her children and school and things like that. And then I spoke to her, spoke to my dad, and we were all in agreement to say that she shouldn’t travel again. So I went to the doctors, and I was I said, we’re refusing to allow her to travel. And they’re like, Okay, that’s the family’s choice. Okay? What was really nice is, soon afterwards, probably about an hour later, they did re approach me and said that the neurosurgeons had looked through everything again, and they actually agreed with me that she wouldn’t have been able to do the transfer.

 

So ultimately, whilst I was, you know, using the LPA to kind of stop medical advice, in some ways, it was actually the right decision, and the medical professionals did agree with me. And then, obviously, soon after, she was transferred to a local hospice, and she passed away a day later from being when she was in the hospice. So obviously, throughout all that time, say, the lasting power of attorney was in place. It only really had to be brought into effect when I needed to refuse treatment. And the other side of things was that it helped phenomenally in terms of the finances. So obviously straight away, because my dad cannot do the finances at all. So when it all happened a week later, I went to the banks and got the last in power of attorney triggered for both my parents. So I became the only person that had capacity to access anything with. You know, obviously the potential that, if my mum had recovered, that she would be able to have the capacity back on the accounts. But it was just obviously a safeguard to make sure that everything was done as it needed to do. And obviously immediately started doing that with all of the accounts in terms of, like, your water, the gas and electric, everything like that. So and obviously decisions, say, like my dad’s care and being able to be the one that people spoke to, you know, so I could actually have that information was incredibly useful.

 

I would say there were some times when people who don’t necessarily understand what an LPA is. There was a little bit of a toing and throwing until somebody more senior would come along and say, Yeah, to this person, you just need to do this. It’s an LPA kind of thing. And look at the situation. Come on. But overall, the LPA for me, out of everything for my mom, the key thing was the being able to say about the treatment that we weren’t going to support what was being said. And you know, it meant that she was in a hospice. We had double doors out to fields. You could hear the sea and smell the sea in the trees, and it was beautiful sunshine. And you know, she was just in this really, really calm environment. And I was with her, you know, all the time.

 

But then what was very annoying is that they kept saying to me that often, if she’s somebody who wouldn’t want you to see it, they often wait until you’re not there, which was horrible, because what we did, having it kind of adds to what I said earlier about the fact that we said to in the end, you know you is okay to pass it is time you need to. Is that we actually had four days, sorry, three days, me and my sister, where we had to do the final goodbyes? Yeah. In the sense of the, you know, every single person was saying to us that she’s waiting until you leave, and we didn’t want to leave, obviously, and, you know, didn’t want that to be the situation, um, but you know, I would leave the hospital having been with her for nine hours and just be sobbing and sobbing, because I’d be like, This is it. I’ll get the call during the night. And it happened on that happened on the Saturday, the Sunday, and then the Monday night she was in the hospice, and so I was expecting it again.

 

Kathryn Knowles  25:27

And on the Tuesday, I laugh about this now, and just bear in mind that you obviously was such an emotional time. And both me and my sister, when I walked in on the Tuesday, I was just like, right, Mom, I was like, we literally our hearts, cannot cope with this anymore. I was like, it’s Pancake Tuesday. What an amazing day. If you’re going to go, you know, we’ll know every single day, it’s Shrove Tuesday. It’s every single year, sorry, it’ll be shrews Tuesday that you passed in Scarborough, there’s a tradition of all the children going and skipping on the seafront. I was like, so it’s going to be a day of celebration every year. And I was like, you know? And I was saying, that’s, that’s it, come on, you know, I keep leaving you so you can do it. So come on. And then I have to, I’ll just share as well that she didn’t actually pass on her own, because we were at the hospice and on that Tuesday, and I’d said all this to her, and they’d come to just change her medication a little bit. And I’d I’d gone off to try and find some lunch, and I got the tap on the shoulder saying you need to come back. And so I then started running along the corridors.

 

And if anybody knows me and knows my mom, you know she’d have absolutely loved it. I just slammed the door open. I just went Not a chance, woman, you are not doing this on your own. And and she did pass as I cuddled her, which I think I can’t imagine a nicer way for her to have gone, knowing that she was so loved, and that obviously I was there and and Susie was there as well as best as she could be, from Italy. So yeah, so for me, the LPA, when it ultimately came down to it. It gave us, in the health side of things, the authority to make mum’s passing the way that we would want it to be okay. So I’m going to stop talking about that side of things. Now. I’ll talk about my dad, so the health LPA with my dad was quite a shock, because obviously with health LPAs, it is all to do when people lose capacity. So my dad, he does have Parkinson’s and he has Parkinson’s dementia. Now, Parkinson’s dementia isn’t the same as your classical dementia. So he can be lucid. Well, he is generally quite lucid. But obviously he doesn’t have lots of him. He doesn’t tend to engage much.

 

There are certain aspects of dementia that I don’t want to go to because obviously the private that are quite typical of dementia and with him. But it isn’t just about forgetting and not having memory and things like that. There are other aspects to it. So the thing that shocked me, I mean, the brilliant thing is, so with my dad, the absolute best thing is to finance LPA, because obviously I’ve been able to step in and I can do everything for him. I can sort out all of his care invoices. I can sort out all of his bills. I can get everything directed to me. Because he keeps getting posted with different things, and he keeps freaking out. But I see him about different stuff, and it’s just, you know, obviously he’s, I keep saying, don’t let him have the post, but he keeps getting it somehow and and, you know, he does get quite concerned about things, and it’s nothing to be concerned about, but to him, obviously it feels like it is. And so that has been phenomenal.

 

Now the health LPA is tricky for me because of the fact that it’s like when they lose capacity. And you think, well, having dementia, what? At what point do they then lose capacity? You know, at what scale of dementia do they lose that? And I think a lot of people like myself who aren’t, you know, obviously, full medical professionals who aren’t legal consultants would probably think, Oh, my relative has dementia. I’ve got a health LPA, I can act on their behalf. And the answer is, you can, to an extent. So my dad was in a care home and was sorting things out, and everything’s worked out fine in the end to the majority of the time. So bear with me as I go through this. And so what was interesting, social workers were coming out to establish his care. What he needs to support at home, and me and my sister were both then we said, right, well, he needs help with this, this, this, this, and this, and he needs help with this, and he needs support like this. And they’re like, well, when does he fall? But he tends to fall during the night time. Like, well, he’s not falling in the care home, so maybe something’s wrong at home. And I was just like, it’s because in the care home, he’s spending 95% of his day in bed because he doesn’t want to engage with anybody, whereas at home, he walks more. That’s why he’s falling less here. So anyway, we had all these different debates and everything and and then the Sara. To work, I said. But the thing is, she was like, you might have the LPA, but the rules are, when we’re assessing for care, we have to do what the person wants, not what they need,

 

Kathryn Knowles  30:14

which absolutely flawed me. I couldn’t believe it, and I was just like, well, if you’re going to do what he wants, well, the first thing he wants is his wife back. Obviously, that’s, you know, can’t happen. Well, he’d love to sort out his own medications. He can’t do that. It’s too dangerous. He’s he doesn’t understand them. And he, if he’s left to his own devices, drops them. We find them hidden in, you know, like the sofa that could be rolled underneath his bed. They might be in his clothing if he’s not watched when he takes them. And so it’s like, right, okay, so he wants to manage them. Well, that’s not going to be possible. He can’t use the internet and he can’t use the phone to ring up the pharmacy to sort of sort it all out. And they’re like, right, okay. And it’s like, oh. And he wants, you know, he said, Well, he goes, Well, he goes, Well, I’d like to get strong enough again to be able to do this and this and this. And they’re like, oh, that’s absolutely amazing. And it’s like, yes, but he’s not done that for the last 15 odd years. He’s refused to do any of the physio. You know, soon as someone comes and does physio with him, he does exactly what they tell him to do when he’s having the sessions, he then refuses to do it completely. Since he won’t go out shopping, he won’t do this, you know, we were just like, right? So there needs to be some kind of sensible outlook on this. And, you know, a tricky thing was, you know, is the fact that my dad, unfortunately, I do get some of my finer personality traits from him, very, very stubborn, incredibly stubborn. He will do everything. Wants to do everything himself, and he does not want people in his space. He doesn’t want people fussing around him. He just wants in my dad’s ideal world, he wants to be at home in bed and asleep, and he just wants people to bring him food as and when he wants to eat. So that became a huge concern. And there’s some other parts of it as well that a little bit upsetting.

 

And, you know, obviously I respectfully made my my points clear as to why, but I just said to them, Look, if this is the case, if that has capacity to make these decisions, to be at home and to do all of these things that you’re saying I was like, then why am I even here in this meeting? You know, if he has this capacity that you say he’s safe to be at home on his own the majority of the day and to do this and to do that and to do this, then you there is an actually, why am I here? You know, obviously I’ve got the LPA so I can be here and be here on his behalf and help him. But that doesn’t add up logically as to why you need me here, or why you know this is happening. And you know, ultimately, my dad wants me there because he can’t follow what they’re saying. And it’s a case of like you’re saying that he can do all this because he has capacity, but he cannot. He needs me here because he cannot follow what you’re saying. He won’t follow what you’re saying, and he’s not going to take it in, and he’s going to keep asking me to explain to him what you’re doing and what the next steps are. So that isn’t someone who can manage their life without support. So I got quite concerned, as you can imagine. Now, as I said that before I did end up being okay. Because actually what the social team said was that, like, right, what Richard wants to do is do all of this himself, but we’re actually, in a sense, overriding that, you know, he needs medications five times a day, so he will have somebody with him visiting him five times a day. And actually, when we’ve looked at it, you know, he wants to do this, this and this. Well, no, he can’t do his own food. No, he does need someone to help him, because he does fall.

 

So actually, whilst I was being on one hand, told no, it’s what he wants, not what he needs, which caused obviously real concern, a lot of emotional difficulty. And then at that point I was just saying to I was like, I was like, I was like, so what’s the point in having a health LBA, literally, I don’t know what else could happen for him to be sort of towards end stage Parkinson’s and the dementia, and yet we still can’t get this active. And actually, what they’ve done is they’ve so they’ve kind of said all that vocally to us, but then gone away and actually come back with a plan that pretty much does cover almost everything that we need. I mean, the biggest concern for me had been that he used to fall quite a lot during the night time, whereas now he’s not falling as much during the night time, but he’s falling more during the day. So it it’s which sounds awful, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s better because he has people visiting during the day, so they’re going to find him more quickly. I mean, he’s had three falls in the last week, and we do have, obviously the monitors on him, but then we established that he’s not pressing the buttons on the monitor, so we’ve had to get him a second monitor, which automatically triggers people to come and get him if he’s fallen. But then it’s quite interesting

 

Kathryn Knowles  34:57

with that one that has worked when he fell at one point this week for. I was a bit concerned, because with those ones, they call and automatically get them if they fall and don’t move for 10 seconds. Now, for somebody with Parkinson’s who’s got a monitor on their arm, not moving for 10 seconds is not always the easiest of things. And I laugh because of getting the irony and just the it’s almost like at the moment, well, what’s going to happen next kind of thing. Hopefully nothing serious, but you never know.

 

So I would say I’ve got a really in my experience, I’ve had a really, really good view of, obviously, not every situation, but a really good view of where a health and a finance LPA work and for the finance touch wood, at the moment, works brilliantly in every single way that it could have done. I’ve had any issues with that whatsoever, the health, LPA, for me, I’ve seen the positives and the negatives, and I don’t even think that’s necessarily the negatives of the LPA, is that there’s an issue with the LPA. I think it’s the system in the UK and how it’s set up at the moment, as to why that’s not necessarily come across in the best of ways a lot of the time. But what I would say, and there’s, I can’t even begin to say how much I advocate for people to at least consider arranging lasting powers of attorney. That it isn’t just something to do when someone is starting to get ill, it is something to do at any point in your life.

 

Myself and Alan, we also set up our LPAs in 2018 because we were told at the time and again, I’m not an expert in in this area, so I’m just, you know, this whole episode is not about me saying LPA, you know, I’m an expert. It’s me saying LPA. And this is, this is my story. This is my life with it, and what’s happened. But we were told, you know, when before we had all the LPAs done, is that you’re surprising how little control you have in terms of decision for family if you don’t have one. So even if you’re married, you know, even if either your children and they’re an adult, you know, they’re over 18, the lack of control you have in decisions in terms of their health or in terms of accessing their finance is huge. Now, I would really strongly consider everybody to at least consider having the LPAs in place. You can set them up in different ways. You can set them up to start straight away. So like with my parents, they were set up to be in effect immediately from 2018 and I’ve never, obviously acted on it. I mean, you can have issues with people who do that, and then the family members something comes DOD and tries to take all the money. Obviously, that’s not me, and not something I would do. So you need to be careful. It must be people you implicitly trust, but you can set them up as well to say, Well, only once they’ve lost capacity. That can be a bit trickier sometimes, to then get them in place as to, again, that whole thing of like, well, what is capacity? What isn’t capacity?

 

But you can obviously seek advice, seek advice from a solicitor. I’m sure some financial planners can give some very, very good direction in this area as well. And a key thing is you can do it yourself. That doesn’t suit everybody. We did ours ourself, but we are quite technical minded. We do work in the finance and insurance space, so we are very familiar with a lot of the terminology and what would be expected and what was needed. If you’re not familiar, you know it can go very wrong, and it is a legal document, and ultimately, in some of these situations, it is literally your life in someone’s hands. So if it isn’t something you’re familiar with, please do get some support from somebody when you are looking at them. But I will be forever, forever grateful that we had the LPAs in place, because, if not, I am certain that my mum would have passed in the back of an ambulance, and I have absolutely no idea would be going on with my dad right now, because I wouldn’t be able to speak to any of his medical professionals, and I wouldn’t have been able to speak to any of the finance people, either, because also, as Be very mindful with an LPA, that it has to be when somebody has capacity. Now we put the LPAs in before my dad had a Parkinson’s dementia, and he’s still classed as having, you know, potential capacity now in terms of his social care needs, now in terms of giving away the authority to his finances and his health decisions, I’m not sure. So depending upon the situation, you would then have to apply to the court protection to even be able to be allowed to have the LPA on somebody.

 

Kathryn Knowles  39:54

So it is really something to consider as soon as possible. Mean, my intention is, even with my children, once they’re 18, to start getting things like this in place for them, and obviously, when the time is right, if they do have partners and things like that and families of their own, then that authority would change, and we would obviously redo it, in a sense, replace it with one where their family had control and things like that. But there’s things that obviously happened during these last few months that I think would have been very scary if we hadn’t had that in place. So that is my story. I’ll stop twittering now. I have successfully got through the podcast without crying. There was a little bit where my eyes did do that little tingly, stinging thing, but I’ve just shut myself down so I could get through it. But I really hope that you found it helpful. I hope it’s given you some food for thought. And yes, it’s been a horrible situation, but in terms of what could have happened and the potential outcomes, I think it has been for us. It’s been the best that it could have possibly been, which is at least some comfort, and at least I was able to get mum the environment that she had for passing that she did, which was very important to all of us. So next time Alan is going to be back with me, we’re going to try and get back into the usual. Swing of things. Please, as always, do, feel free to send me any ideas that you’d like me to cover. But we’re going to be talking about fatty liver disease and protection insurance next time do visit the website practical hyphen protection.co.uk. To get your podcast certificate. And as always, thank you to planner X for being the C certificate, CPD certificate, providers for the podcast. I completely lost my words then, but lovely to be back and speaking to you all again and have a have a great day, everybody. You you.

Transcript Disclaimer:

Episodes of the Practical Protection Podcast include a transcript of the episode’s audio. The text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record.

We often discuss health and medical conditions in relation to protection insurance and underwriting, always consult with a healthcare professional if you are concerned about any medical conditions and symptoms we have covered in any episode.

Episode 10 - The Value of Lasting Powers of Attorney

Hi, everybody, it's been a while. I’ve been away from the podcast for a bit as my mum died in February. It has not been an easy time and I have tried to carry on as usual, as much as possible, but I think we can call agree that the podcast was an area that could take a pause.

I’m starting to get back into the swing of things and it feels right that the first episode of the podcast is focused upon Lasting Powers of Attorney. I am not an expert in this area, but I am sharing what my personal experience was of having these in place for both of my parents, when tragedy struck.

The key takeaways:

  • A health LPA was invaluable when my mum was in critical condition, but there are limits to use for my dad who has Parkinsons and Dementia and is still deemed to have capacity
  • A financial LPA was invaluable for both of my parents and has, in our situation, been easier to enforce than the health LPA
  • Having the LPAs in place meant that I could quickly take over my parent’s affairs and whilst going through one of the most horrible experiences of my life, I could make sure that my mum passed in a comfortable environment and ensure my dad received the care that he needs. They helped an unbearable situation, to be a bit more bearable.

This episode is my personal story, it is not advice. However, I do wholeheartedly advocate that everyone at least consider the merits of putting LPAs in place.

Next time Alan will be back with me and we will be covering how fatty liver disease and protection insurance work.

Remember, if you are listening to this as part of your work, you can claim a CPD certificate on our website, thanks to our sponsors PlannerX.

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Kathryn Knowles  00:11

Hi everybody. Today, I am back after quite a break on the podcast. It is season 11, Episode 10, and I have some personal experiences to share and to look at in regards to the value of lasting powers of attorney, this is the practical protection podcast.

 

Kathryn Knowles  00:42

So some of you will know this. I imagine most of you won't. In February of this year, 2026 so two months ago, just a little over two months ago, my mum died. I'm going to go into some of the details. I won't go through everything, because not everything is relevant to what we're discussing today, but I might go off a little side tangent in regards to her situation and what we experienced a couple of months ago. So to sort of start things off, my mom had two strokes on the third of February, and one of these was a major stroke, very, very major stroke. She then had a third stroke 10 days later, and died on the 17th of February, so exactly two weeks after the very initial strokes. And as I'm sure you can imagine, my usual podcast routine, my usual work went very out the window, along with other things as well that all took a definite back step priority in terms of, while she was with us, obviously looking after her as best as I could and being with her as much as I could. And then once she had passed, making sure that everything was sorted. It was, it was, it was up to me, pretty much, to sort out the estate and to make sure that my dad is okay.

 

So the reason for that is that not only have I been coping with my mom passing, and there was so much administration work, it's crazy, but she was also the full time care for my dad, so he has Parkinson's and dementia, and I've needed to try and coordinate everything for him, and trying to obviously make everything as as smooth as possible for him to be able to stay at home, and for him to have carers and things like that. It hasn't been the nicest of times. I'm sure anybody who's lost a parent will will know that it brings a lot of emotions, lots of different types of emotions. For me, it will probably sound a bit strange some of my emotions. In regards to it, I was incredibly close to my mom, very, very close, so it has been a huge Knock, and she lives. We lived on the same street in the same town. It's really not that far away. It takes maybe a minute to walk to her house from mine, and we always saw each other, and she was very, very close to my children as well. So obviously very big shock for them that suddenly grandma, who they saw almost every day, suddenly wasn't there and playing with them and things like that. But we've luckily been able to focus, and we've really focused on the positive memories and and it might seem strange in the way that I say it, but in some ways, the way that she passed made it easier for us, in some ways, to process the grief. And I know that grief is going to keep hitting me, but obviously, in terms of everything she had the major strokes we had that very, very minimal window of hoping that things would improve. She did. Then become lucid again.

 

She was communicating, not through speech, but through, you know, her eyes, her facial expression, and she could move her left arm and and there was some lovely moments where she really, really really reached out engaged, and, you know, was able to use our hands to kind of signal to us what she wanted, and also to show to us that she loved us. And I have to share it and keep it for prosperity, for everything, but say, like the first day when she was able to actually communicate with us again, in her own way, is that she kept, she kept yanking at my top of cardigan that I had on with the like, a little bow, and I couldn't understand that I was saying to the nurse, I was saying to my husband, Alan, said Tom, what she wants to know she wants what she won't. He was like, take your thing off, just in case. For some reason the ribbons freaking her out. So obviously, because why would the ribbon freak her out? But you just, you never know. In those situations, and you've got this very hospitalized sterile environment, there's machines, massive machines everywhere, beeping.

 

You just like, I just, you lose kind of sense of what's going on. And I took it off, and she kept on pulling at me and pulling at me and and eventually I just said to Mum, I don't know what you want, because I first was obviously frustrated as well. So I don't know what you want, Mom, I don't know what you want. I was like, but I'm just gonna lay on you and cuddle you, because that's the last thing I can think of. And that is actually what she wanted. So there she was, bless her, having had two strokes, not able to speak, obviously, in her own way, she would have been quite scared by what was going on. And what she wanted was for me to lay on her so she could have a cuddle. And what she then did was a very, very mum thing was that she then stroked and patted my back for a few minutes, and just closed her eyes and was content doing that. And I tried to get up again, and she yanked me back down again to become mum. And obviously, it's lovely to remember that. But then after a little bit, obviously she started to not be

 

Kathryn Knowles  05:41

able to communicate as much, and it became much, and it became quite clear that things were going the other way. And there was lots and lots of like, obviously, her faculties and everything weren't as they should be. And we knew that it was coming and what was coming, and because it was happening over two weeks, and there was so much going on, it was so intense, because my sister lives in Italy, sister lives in Italy, so it was getting her back, starting out a flight, you know, there was, there was never a moment of stop. It was literally, wake up, get to the hospital. That was, you know, an hour and a half away, you know, virtually every day and and then back again, just trying to as well, trying to be here. So have some normality for the children, which is what my mum would have wanted. But by the end, and we will get into also the last, especially once she'd had the third stroke, and I'll explain it a bit more when I talk about the LPA, it got to a point, and I know not everybody would agree with this, so if you don't agree with me, obviously I appreciate that.

 

That would be your opinion and but I would just ask that not to have any negative messages, if that's okay, because this is a situation that we faced, and obviously we were in the emotion of it and the situation of seeing it from the very start of the stroke right through to the end. But towards the end, we were saying to her that she had to go and that we obviously we loved her, but it really was her time. And I think having it over those two weeks, it gave us that chance to obviously have to come to terms with the most massive shock that we could have ever expected, but it gave us time to process and almost grieve before it actually happened. So I'll, I'll chat through what happened with me and the lasting powers of attorney, so you will get some of the personal story as well. I think it's important to hear some of that as you then might hear some of the decisions that were made as we went along, and go from there. So let's start.

 

So third of February, my dad, well, first of all, my mom had sent me a message that didn't make any sense. And as I'm sure you can all imagine where I'm going with this, I sent her, as the typical sarcastic child, a message back, saying, Are you having a stroke? Which, of course, yeah, she was. And she would laugh about that. I have to say, she would really laugh about that. You know, in hindsight, she would. But then, like my dad rang me. He never really rings me. Always does by mistake, any video called me. So I was laughing away, sort of saying, Dad, you've booked dialed me, you know, and everything. And fortunately, he'd managed to turn the camera so I could see Mum and see she was obviously not well and on the floor, and me and Alan got there, and obviously we were the ones providing her with the support, like the first aid and stuff, until the ambulance arrived, and then, luckily, it wasn't too long a wait. It was a wait, but it wasn't too long away, but it was obvious what was happening. And obviously, when they turned up, the first thing I did was say, I have lasting power of attorney. Well, obviously Bao saying this is what's happening, and giving them all the symptoms that she'd experienced while we were there. I was then saying to them, as they were doing all the tests to see which hospital she needs to go to, I was very clear to say, I have a lasting power of attorney, so that they knew that, obviously, in terms of decisions and things like that, it was me to go to. And you know, it was very clear to them that my dad wasn't the person that was going to be involved in that. And very luckily, my dad already had carers visiting him just in the morning, once once a day, and they luckily came and looked after him while we sorted everything for mum.

 

So obviously we knew things were very, very serious, because the two closest proper stroke units, in a sense, near us, the big ones, are an hour and a half an hour an hour and a half away, roughly an hour and a half, if you've taken all the traffic usually. And they basically said she needs to go there, but we can't take her there. She won't make it. We need to go to the local hospital, which obviously, straightaway, you then, know, wow, this is serious. And so went to the hospital, obviously, and collected her things. Obviously, started getting her overnight bag sorted, and to make sure, just in case, because I was just putting anything and everything in there that I could think of. And. And obviously got to hospital, and again, started repeating to everybody, because she was in the the A and E, just like repeating I have last name, have attorneys saying it to everybody, and everybody, just at this point, trusted because it was such a serious situation, and just completely trusted me, which was lovely that I wasn't having to just immediately get involved. And started doing all that while they were again checking mom. I then went into certain areas, made sure that they had my contact details, not to ring my dad and and things like that, so that they could contact me. And again, the LP didn't even really stand in at that point, you know, say I did have it, and I was telling them, but they just trusted me, which was really lovely. I don't know

 

Kathryn Knowles  10:39

how much they meant to have done that, but I don't care. I'm very, very grateful for them for doing that. And we then obviously had to go to hull the next day, which is where they decided she would go to. It was either hull or York. So they took her to hull, so we went through the next day. And again, I repeated to everybody as a just in case that we had the LPA. And I wasn't asked for proof of it at any point. And I think probably at this stage in the grand scheme of things, everything was so serious that it was almost as if, is there any actual decisions to be made here. You know, at this point, it was just keeping her alive and also seeing where she would be in terms of recovery, you know, in terms of what they said, obviously, she developed hydrocephalus, which is the fluid and pressure on the brain, and establishing if that was going down, not going down, what her movements were, and things like that. And I say she could, after a couple of days, recognized that I was there. She could signal with her hands to me, hold my hand, squeeze my hand, things like that. She, at times, could move her left leg, but the entire right side of her body had unfortunately gone. And I did the things that you meant to do.

I read Sherlock Holmes to her. That's our thing. Sherlock Holmes together, our detective book. So I would read that to her every time I went just short stories, so as not to overburden her, I would tell her things that were happening. We recorded voice messages from all the grandkids until my sister could get here. You know, we did voice video calls so she could hear and speak to her, obviously how much she loved her and and I massaged her every day massage the legs, just trying to get that feeling, or try and trigger something in her legs as much as I could. But unfortunately, the damage was really there. And then about seven so seven days later, ish, I got the call saying that they wanted to see me early in the morning, not so outside of usual visiting time, because the consultants needed to see me, which immediately, you know you get anything right, okay, and I know it's coming. So I was just like, right? Is this talking about things like DNR, so do not resuscitate? And they're like, yes, you need to come in and we need to chat through the options. So I was like, okay, and, and for me, it was, having the LPA was fantastic because obviously I knew that I had control, but it was also incredibly daunting. So for the LPA, the people who had the LPA, for my mom was myself and my husband.

 

My dad isn't somebody that we put on, so we did the LPAs that's in power of attorneys in 2018 as a as a preparation, because we knew, obviously, with my dad, how poorly my dad was at the time, that and his conditions will only progress, that we needed, really, to have these things in place. And it was something for my mom, for comfort for her and and again, that's been a big part of the shock as well, is that horribly we all expected my dad to to be the person that would go first because of his health conditions. And obviously it's been a very different situation. And but anyway, so that with the LPA, brilliant to have. But I would share as well that emotionally incredibly tough, because obviously, in this situation, and I know it's obviously my situation, but I my dad, in a sense, wasn't there. He can't be. My sister wasn't there to hand because she's in a different country. But ultimately, and I was fine. Every single step of the way, I was fine, but the DNR part was the bit that got me, because ultimately it was my say so, and obviously I spoke to my sister, and we were both in agreement that with how she'd stopped progressing and how she actually seemed to be getting a bit worse, we were both in agreement that it would need to be a DNR, but it was me putting my voice And my signature and everything like that.

 

But it turned out, I went to see the consultants the next day, I think it was day eight, and they actually just told me they were putting a DNR on. They would completely ignore the L they basically said to me, you don't need to worry about the emotion of having the LPA and all of this that's hitting you right now. We are putting the DNR on because. The right thing to do, and that's it. Now, I'm not sure technically, in terms of the LPA, whether that's right or wrong. I'm sure some people who are technically far more savvy in that area, they mean the legal side of things, would know. But whether or not it was technically okay or not, for me, it was the right thing, it took a huge pressure and guilt off me, and I just sobbed. Obviously, I sobbed as we were talking through the situation. I was sobbed when they said I didn't need to have the say, final say, so on the DNR, and it was really, really hard, but it was absolutely the right thing.

 

Kathryn Knowles  15:38

So two days later, day 10, she was moved to Scarborough, and they'd moved her back. Now they'd said to us that she'd started to, in a sense, improve in terms of her I forgot the name of it now, but it's a consciousness scale. Now, I won't go into all of it, but there was actually some errors in the transfer with my mum, in that she shouldn't have been transferred, and it caused a lot of problems in terms of the issue of the death certificates and different things like that. There needs to be some investigations and things, but I won't go into all of that. So overall, what I would say is the majority, I would say 95% of the care that she received from the medical professionals was beyond excellence. It was just a procedural I don't even though there was an error in her transfer and when she should have been transferred, I don't believe that it would have changed the ultimate outcome. But still tough, obviously. So she was transferred, and I was called and they said, like, we've sent your mom 20 minutes ago to Scarborough. And I was like, oh, okay, you know, kind of like, right, what's going on? Because we were told that when she would leave, it would be to, like, a rehab ward or something. So it was very confusing. And there's not a rehab world at Scarborough, like the, not the type that would be needed and and they were like, but we've lost the DNR paperwork. And I was like, Okay, right. So I was just, I said, I was like, Don't worry, it's fine. I'll start at the hospital.

 

At this point in our minds, we thought, well, she must have started to show some improvement. Even though I'd seen her the day before and didn't think she was as well. We were thinking she must have shown improvement for them to move her, for her to think that she can come back towards galbra. So then about 20 minutes after that, I got a phone call from a junior doctor at Scarborough hospital telling me that we all needed to get in because it was pretty much time and she was going. And so we got to scab as quickly as we could, and I managed to take my dad as well. So this entire time, my dad had been in a care home, and I had had to give them a copy of the LPA, and they knew me. They knew exactly our family situation, but for just the technicalities, so obviously I gave him the copy of it, and then everything was fine, so that they were just absolutely brilliant at making sure he was okay, so that I could focus on mom. So I'd got my dad, obviously took him to the hospital and and again, as we got there, they were like, Oh, well, she's here. So, oh no, she's in this place. So we went to that place. As we were there, they went, Oh, she's actually in recess ward. And I immediately said, there's a DNR. It was lost before she was transferred. Do not do it. It's, it's, she's a DNR. I have LPA, and I was able to explain it to everybody again.

 

So some quick movements around to get things sorted. And they came back and they said, Well, look, she is in the resource ward. However, they've already decided that they wouldn't do it because of how poorly she is. And I said, Well, I said, Thank God for that. And she came back up onto the ward. And it was around this time that there was these things brought to me where there was going to be an internal investigation and things like that. But at that point, the hospital did say, Look, can we just see the LPA? And I was like, absolutely. So obviously I gave them electronic copies. They just saw it on my phone, and it was brilliant, because then they just did everything with me, this book to me completely, and they complete. They went really above and beyond. So, like, we were just in the middle of, like a normal Ward, a six person Ward, and they completely closed us off from everybody. They even brought in like a camp bed for my dad, so he needs to rest a lot with the parks and so he could sleep. And the slept next to each other, holding hands, which was very, very sweet to see, because they've been married. Last year was their 50th wedding anniversary, and obviously saw see all this stuff was having with the LPAs and everything like that.

 

Then it was interesting, because up until this point, I almost felt like the LPA hadn't really had that much. Had much of a thing, because it all just been such, like, right? Everybody answer that kind of thing. We need to get this all done and just whatever needs to happen, happens to I was suddenly told that the neurosurgeons wanted to send my mum back to home. Now what I forgot to mention at this point is that my mum actually had had a third stroke on her travel from Hult Scarborough, so on that 10th day, so when she'd arrived at the hospital, she was incredibly poorly, more so than we'd seen her. Any point beforehand, and they said, Oh, the neurosurgeons have checked and they think she should go back to hull. And I just looked at the doctor. And again, this might not be the same decision that all the listeners would make, but again, if there's anybody who has, if you have positive comments, then please do feel free to comment and get in touch with me. But any kind of negativity I would I would greatly appreciate, if you disagree, not to comment to me about it. But the doctor said to me, they want to send her back to her. And I said, I have an LPA. Can I refuse? And they just looked at me. And they looked at me

 

Kathryn Knowles  20:34

really surprised, and they're like, Well, if you want to. And I was like, I was like, the travel, the journey here this morning has given her a third stroke. I was like, it's literally happened on this journey. She was not well enough to trans, be transferred. Now I said, If you travel, if you send her back, I'm convinced that she's going to die on route to hull, and she won't be with her family, whereas here, we all know what's going to happen. At least here she's got all of us, and she knows she's surrounded by love. And I said, I won't need to check with my sister. I need to check with my dad. But again, there was then that emotion of, well, I'm the one that has the final say. Soaks of the LPA legally, I spoke to my sister, who had been able to come back to England, but I'd had to go back due to her children and school and things like that. And then I spoke to her, spoke to my dad, and we were all in agreement to say that she shouldn't travel again. So I went to the doctors, and I was I said, we're refusing to allow her to travel. And they're like, Okay, that's the family's choice. Okay? What was really nice is, soon afterwards, probably about an hour later, they did re approach me and said that the neurosurgeons had looked through everything again, and they actually agreed with me that she wouldn't have been able to do the transfer.

 

So ultimately, whilst I was, you know, using the LPA to kind of stop medical advice, in some ways, it was actually the right decision, and the medical professionals did agree with me. And then, obviously, soon after, she was transferred to a local hospice, and she passed away a day later from being when she was in the hospice. So obviously, throughout all that time, say, the lasting power of attorney was in place. It only really had to be brought into effect when I needed to refuse treatment. And the other side of things was that it helped phenomenally in terms of the finances. So obviously straight away, because my dad cannot do the finances at all. So when it all happened a week later, I went to the banks and got the last in power of attorney triggered for both my parents. So I became the only person that had capacity to access anything with. You know, obviously the potential that, if my mum had recovered, that she would be able to have the capacity back on the accounts. But it was just obviously a safeguard to make sure that everything was done as it needed to do. And obviously immediately started doing that with all of the accounts in terms of, like, your water, the gas and electric, everything like that. So and obviously decisions, say, like my dad's care and being able to be the one that people spoke to, you know, so I could actually have that information was incredibly useful.

 

I would say there were some times when people who don't necessarily understand what an LPA is. There was a little bit of a toing and throwing until somebody more senior would come along and say, Yeah, to this person, you just need to do this. It's an LPA kind of thing. And look at the situation. Come on. But overall, the LPA for me, out of everything for my mom, the key thing was the being able to say about the treatment that we weren't going to support what was being said. And you know, it meant that she was in a hospice. We had double doors out to fields. You could hear the sea and smell the sea in the trees, and it was beautiful sunshine. And you know, she was just in this really, really calm environment. And I was with her, you know, all the time.

 

But then what was very annoying is that they kept saying to me that often, if she's somebody who wouldn't want you to see it, they often wait until you're not there, which was horrible, because what we did, having it kind of adds to what I said earlier about the fact that we said to in the end, you know you is okay to pass it is time you need to. Is that we actually had four days, sorry, three days, me and my sister, where we had to do the final goodbyes? Yeah. In the sense of the, you know, every single person was saying to us that she's waiting until you leave, and we didn't want to leave, obviously, and, you know, didn't want that to be the situation, um, but you know, I would leave the hospital having been with her for nine hours and just be sobbing and sobbing, because I'd be like, This is it. I'll get the call during the night. And it happened on that happened on the Saturday, the Sunday, and then the Monday night she was in the hospice, and so I was expecting it again.

 

Kathryn Knowles  25:27

And on the Tuesday, I laugh about this now, and just bear in mind that you obviously was such an emotional time. And both me and my sister, when I walked in on the Tuesday, I was just like, right, Mom, I was like, we literally our hearts, cannot cope with this anymore. I was like, it's Pancake Tuesday. What an amazing day. If you're going to go, you know, we'll know every single day, it's Shrove Tuesday. It's every single year, sorry, it'll be shrews Tuesday that you passed in Scarborough, there's a tradition of all the children going and skipping on the seafront. I was like, so it's going to be a day of celebration every year. And I was like, you know? And I was saying, that's, that's it, come on, you know, I keep leaving you so you can do it. So come on. And then I have to, I'll just share as well that she didn't actually pass on her own, because we were at the hospice and on that Tuesday, and I'd said all this to her, and they'd come to just change her medication a little bit. And I'd I'd gone off to try and find some lunch, and I got the tap on the shoulder saying you need to come back. And so I then started running along the corridors.

 

And if anybody knows me and knows my mom, you know she'd have absolutely loved it. I just slammed the door open. I just went Not a chance, woman, you are not doing this on your own. And and she did pass as I cuddled her, which I think I can't imagine a nicer way for her to have gone, knowing that she was so loved, and that obviously I was there and and Susie was there as well as best as she could be, from Italy. So yeah, so for me, the LPA, when it ultimately came down to it. It gave us, in the health side of things, the authority to make mum's passing the way that we would want it to be okay. So I'm going to stop talking about that side of things. Now. I'll talk about my dad, so the health LPA with my dad was quite a shock, because obviously with health LPAs, it is all to do when people lose capacity. So my dad, he does have Parkinson's and he has Parkinson's dementia. Now, Parkinson's dementia isn't the same as your classical dementia. So he can be lucid. Well, he is generally quite lucid. But obviously he doesn't have lots of him. He doesn't tend to engage much.

 

There are certain aspects of dementia that I don't want to go to because obviously the private that are quite typical of dementia and with him. But it isn't just about forgetting and not having memory and things like that. There are other aspects to it. So the thing that shocked me, I mean, the brilliant thing is, so with my dad, the absolute best thing is to finance LPA, because obviously I've been able to step in and I can do everything for him. I can sort out all of his care invoices. I can sort out all of his bills. I can get everything directed to me. Because he keeps getting posted with different things, and he keeps freaking out. But I see him about different stuff, and it's just, you know, obviously he's, I keep saying, don't let him have the post, but he keeps getting it somehow and and, you know, he does get quite concerned about things, and it's nothing to be concerned about, but to him, obviously it feels like it is. And so that has been phenomenal.

 

Now the health LPA is tricky for me because of the fact that it's like when they lose capacity. And you think, well, having dementia, what? At what point do they then lose capacity? You know, at what scale of dementia do they lose that? And I think a lot of people like myself who aren't, you know, obviously, full medical professionals who aren't legal consultants would probably think, Oh, my relative has dementia. I've got a health LPA, I can act on their behalf. And the answer is, you can, to an extent. So my dad was in a care home and was sorting things out, and everything's worked out fine in the end to the majority of the time. So bear with me as I go through this. And so what was interesting, social workers were coming out to establish his care. What he needs to support at home, and me and my sister were both then we said, right, well, he needs help with this, this, this, this, and this, and he needs help with this, and he needs support like this. And they're like, well, when does he fall? But he tends to fall during the night time. Like, well, he's not falling in the care home, so maybe something's wrong at home. And I was just like, it's because in the care home, he's spending 95% of his day in bed because he doesn't want to engage with anybody, whereas at home, he walks more. That's why he's falling less here. So anyway, we had all these different debates and everything and and then the Sara. To work, I said. But the thing is, she was like, you might have the LPA, but the rules are, when we're assessing for care, we have to do what the person wants, not what they need,

 

Kathryn Knowles  30:14

which absolutely flawed me. I couldn't believe it, and I was just like, well, if you're going to do what he wants, well, the first thing he wants is his wife back. Obviously, that's, you know, can't happen. Well, he'd love to sort out his own medications. He can't do that. It's too dangerous. He's he doesn't understand them. And he, if he's left to his own devices, drops them. We find them hidden in, you know, like the sofa that could be rolled underneath his bed. They might be in his clothing if he's not watched when he takes them. And so it's like, right, okay, so he wants to manage them. Well, that's not going to be possible. He can't use the internet and he can't use the phone to ring up the pharmacy to sort of sort it all out. And they're like, right, okay. And it's like, oh. And he wants, you know, he said, Well, he goes, Well, he goes, Well, I'd like to get strong enough again to be able to do this and this and this. And they're like, oh, that's absolutely amazing. And it's like, yes, but he's not done that for the last 15 odd years. He's refused to do any of the physio. You know, soon as someone comes and does physio with him, he does exactly what they tell him to do when he's having the sessions, he then refuses to do it completely. Since he won't go out shopping, he won't do this, you know, we were just like, right? So there needs to be some kind of sensible outlook on this. And, you know, a tricky thing was, you know, is the fact that my dad, unfortunately, I do get some of my finer personality traits from him, very, very stubborn, incredibly stubborn. He will do everything. Wants to do everything himself, and he does not want people in his space. He doesn't want people fussing around him. He just wants in my dad's ideal world, he wants to be at home in bed and asleep, and he just wants people to bring him food as and when he wants to eat. So that became a huge concern. And there's some other parts of it as well that a little bit upsetting.

 

And, you know, obviously I respectfully made my my points clear as to why, but I just said to them, Look, if this is the case, if that has capacity to make these decisions, to be at home and to do all of these things that you're saying I was like, then why am I even here in this meeting? You know, if he has this capacity that you say he's safe to be at home on his own the majority of the day and to do this and to do that and to do this, then you there is an actually, why am I here? You know, obviously I've got the LPA so I can be here and be here on his behalf and help him. But that doesn't add up logically as to why you need me here, or why you know this is happening. And you know, ultimately, my dad wants me there because he can't follow what they're saying. And it's a case of like you're saying that he can do all this because he has capacity, but he cannot. He needs me here because he cannot follow what you're saying. He won't follow what you're saying, and he's not going to take it in, and he's going to keep asking me to explain to him what you're doing and what the next steps are. So that isn't someone who can manage their life without support. So I got quite concerned, as you can imagine. Now, as I said that before I did end up being okay. Because actually what the social team said was that, like, right, what Richard wants to do is do all of this himself, but we're actually, in a sense, overriding that, you know, he needs medications five times a day, so he will have somebody with him visiting him five times a day. And actually, when we've looked at it, you know, he wants to do this, this and this. Well, no, he can't do his own food. No, he does need someone to help him, because he does fall.

 

So actually, whilst I was being on one hand, told no, it's what he wants, not what he needs, which caused obviously real concern, a lot of emotional difficulty. And then at that point I was just saying to I was like, I was like, I was like, so what's the point in having a health LBA, literally, I don't know what else could happen for him to be sort of towards end stage Parkinson's and the dementia, and yet we still can't get this active. And actually, what they've done is they've so they've kind of said all that vocally to us, but then gone away and actually come back with a plan that pretty much does cover almost everything that we need. I mean, the biggest concern for me had been that he used to fall quite a lot during the night time, whereas now he's not falling as much during the night time, but he's falling more during the day. So it it's which sounds awful, but in the grand scheme of things, that's better because he has people visiting during the day, so they're going to find him more quickly. I mean, he's had three falls in the last week, and we do have, obviously the monitors on him, but then we established that he's not pressing the buttons on the monitor, so we've had to get him a second monitor, which automatically triggers people to come and get him if he's fallen. But then it's quite interesting

 

Kathryn Knowles  34:57

with that one that has worked when he fell at one point this week for. I was a bit concerned, because with those ones, they call and automatically get them if they fall and don't move for 10 seconds. Now, for somebody with Parkinson's who's got a monitor on their arm, not moving for 10 seconds is not always the easiest of things. And I laugh because of getting the irony and just the it's almost like at the moment, well, what's going to happen next kind of thing. Hopefully nothing serious, but you never know.

 

So I would say I've got a really in my experience, I've had a really, really good view of, obviously, not every situation, but a really good view of where a health and a finance LPA work and for the finance touch wood, at the moment, works brilliantly in every single way that it could have done. I've had any issues with that whatsoever, the health, LPA, for me, I've seen the positives and the negatives, and I don't even think that's necessarily the negatives of the LPA, is that there's an issue with the LPA. I think it's the system in the UK and how it's set up at the moment, as to why that's not necessarily come across in the best of ways a lot of the time. But what I would say, and there's, I can't even begin to say how much I advocate for people to at least consider arranging lasting powers of attorney. That it isn't just something to do when someone is starting to get ill, it is something to do at any point in your life.

 

Myself and Alan, we also set up our LPAs in 2018 because we were told at the time and again, I'm not an expert in in this area, so I'm just, you know, this whole episode is not about me saying LPA, you know, I'm an expert. It's me saying LPA. And this is, this is my story. This is my life with it, and what's happened. But we were told, you know, when before we had all the LPAs done, is that you're surprising how little control you have in terms of decision for family if you don't have one. So even if you're married, you know, even if either your children and they're an adult, you know, they're over 18, the lack of control you have in decisions in terms of their health or in terms of accessing their finance is huge. Now, I would really strongly consider everybody to at least consider having the LPAs in place. You can set them up in different ways. You can set them up to start straight away. So like with my parents, they were set up to be in effect immediately from 2018 and I've never, obviously acted on it. I mean, you can have issues with people who do that, and then the family members something comes DOD and tries to take all the money. Obviously, that's not me, and not something I would do. So you need to be careful. It must be people you implicitly trust, but you can set them up as well to say, Well, only once they've lost capacity. That can be a bit trickier sometimes, to then get them in place as to, again, that whole thing of like, well, what is capacity? What isn't capacity?

 

But you can obviously seek advice, seek advice from a solicitor. I'm sure some financial planners can give some very, very good direction in this area as well. And a key thing is you can do it yourself. That doesn't suit everybody. We did ours ourself, but we are quite technical minded. We do work in the finance and insurance space, so we are very familiar with a lot of the terminology and what would be expected and what was needed. If you're not familiar, you know it can go very wrong, and it is a legal document, and ultimately, in some of these situations, it is literally your life in someone's hands. So if it isn't something you're familiar with, please do get some support from somebody when you are looking at them. But I will be forever, forever grateful that we had the LPAs in place, because, if not, I am certain that my mum would have passed in the back of an ambulance, and I have absolutely no idea would be going on with my dad right now, because I wouldn't be able to speak to any of his medical professionals, and I wouldn't have been able to speak to any of the finance people, either, because also, as Be very mindful with an LPA, that it has to be when somebody has capacity. Now we put the LPAs in before my dad had a Parkinson's dementia, and he's still classed as having, you know, potential capacity now in terms of his social care needs, now in terms of giving away the authority to his finances and his health decisions, I'm not sure. So depending upon the situation, you would then have to apply to the court protection to even be able to be allowed to have the LPA on somebody.

 

Kathryn Knowles  39:54

So it is really something to consider as soon as possible. Mean, my intention is, even with my children, once they're 18, to start getting things like this in place for them, and obviously, when the time is right, if they do have partners and things like that and families of their own, then that authority would change, and we would obviously redo it, in a sense, replace it with one where their family had control and things like that. But there's things that obviously happened during these last few months that I think would have been very scary if we hadn't had that in place. So that is my story. I'll stop twittering now. I have successfully got through the podcast without crying. There was a little bit where my eyes did do that little tingly, stinging thing, but I've just shut myself down so I could get through it. But I really hope that you found it helpful. I hope it's given you some food for thought. And yes, it's been a horrible situation, but in terms of what could have happened and the potential outcomes, I think it has been for us. It's been the best that it could have possibly been, which is at least some comfort, and at least I was able to get mum the environment that she had for passing that she did, which was very important to all of us. So next time Alan is going to be back with me, we're going to try and get back into the usual. Swing of things. Please, as always, do, feel free to send me any ideas that you'd like me to cover. But we're going to be talking about fatty liver disease and protection insurance next time do visit the website practical hyphen protection.co.uk. To get your podcast certificate. And as always, thank you to planner X for being the C certificate, CPD certificate, providers for the podcast. I completely lost my words then, but lovely to be back and speaking to you all again and have a have a great day, everybody. You you.

Transcript Disclaimer:

Episodes of the Practical Protection Podcast include a transcript of the episode's audio. The text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record.

We often discuss health and medical conditions in relation to protection insurance and underwriting, always consult with a healthcare professional if you are concerned about any medical conditions and symptoms we have covered in any episode.

Episodes

Kathryn Knowles is talking about the FCA Protection Market Study Interim Report
Episode 9 – FCA Protection Market Study Interim Report

February 19, 2026

Kathryn Knowles is discussing how to support vulnerable clients when advising on protection insurance
Episode 8 – Vulnerable Clients

February 5, 2026

Episode 7 – Weight Loss Drugs

January 22, 2026

Kathryn Knowles and Alan Knowles discussing Neurofibromatosis and Life Insurance
Episode 6 – Neurofibromatosis

December 11, 2025

Kathryn Knowles discussing FCA Protection Paper
Episode 5 – FCA Protection Paper

November 27, 2025

Kathryn Knowles discussing Cystic Fibrosis
Episode 4 – Cystic Fibrosis

November 13, 2025

Kathryn Knowles discussing Critical Illness Cover in Trust
Episode 3 – Critical Illness Cover in Trust

October 23, 2025

Coeliac disease life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection
Episode 2 – Coeliac Disease

October 9, 2025

Kathryn Knowles discussing joint life second death vs single life insurance
Episode 1 – Joint Life Second Death vs Single Life Cover

September 18, 2025

Bowel Cancer and Me - Phil Jeynes
Episode 13 – Bowel Cancer and Me

July 10, 2025