Her frail body destroyed by years of alcohol abuse, dying Beverley Pickorer lies trapped in her care home bed, unable to move at the age of just 35.
The jaundiced mum-of-four has cirrhosis of the liver, rotten teeth and cannot speak or feed herself after a decade of heavy drinking.
At her worst she would down 24 cans of lager a day plus seven pints in the pub and a bottle of perry cider.
Now she faces certain death her partner of six years, Anthony Howard, is forced to watch her fading away. She has spent the last eight months receiving palliative care in a home where most patients are pensioners.
Loyal Anthony, 31, said: “I’ve been looking after my partner for five-and-a-half years, and she’s constantly
been in and out of hospital with liver cirrhosis.
“She’s the youngest person in this care home. All she can do every day now is stay in bed. The staff come and turn her every two hours.”
Anthony has released the heartbreaking pictures to warn other people of the devastating impact alcohol dependency can have.
He is also desperate to get Beverley out of the care home, so she can spend her final days at their house in Parson Cross, Sheffield.
Anthony said Beverley’s drinking problems started in her early 20s, during a series of troubled relationships. He said: “When I met her I took her drinking as part of her.
“It’s something I got used to. When she got up and had a can in her hand straight away, I got immune to it. To her it was like having a cup of tea.
“Beverley has four beautiful children, they are now aged six to 15, and they have all been taken into care because she can’t look after them.”
He said he was now fighting to get his own drink problems under control and called for more help for alcoholics: “I would not put all this on Beverley’s toes because I have had a problem with alcohol too. We would go to the pub together.
“I think the Government should do more to help alcoholics.
“They should fund more care homes that specialise in alcohol problems and alcohol misuse, to rehabilitate them and get them back into the community.
“I love Beverley to bits. She is my world. We are engaged and just waiting to get married.”
Speaking of his wish to get her home, he said: “It’s tragic. We made an agreement that when she dies she would die in my arms at home, but the NHS has said it would be too expensive to care for her at home.
“They would have to pay for one carer and a nurse. She’s on a syringe driver to stop her having seizures.
“But Beverley wants to die at home, I don’t think you can deny a person that.”
Kevin Clifford, chief nurse for NHS Sheffield Clinical Commissioning Group, said that he was unable to comment on individual patients.
But he added: “We have to consider the safest and most appropriate manner in which an individual’s needs can be met.
“It is always regrettable when we have to take a decision based on a patient’s safety which doesn’t meet the hopes of their family.
“But we work with the family and endeavour to offer care that is in the best interests of the patient and agreeable to the family.”
Every year about 4,000 people in the UK lose their lives to cirrhosis – scarring of the liver caused by continuous damage. A further 700 people with the condition are given liver transplants.
Early signs of the illness are a loss of appetite, nausea and itchy skin. In the later stages symptoms can include jaundice and vomiting of blood.
Cirrhosis cannot be cured but its progression can be slowed down by stopping drinking and losing weight.
According to NHS figures from 2001 to 2009, there were 400 deaths a year in people aged up to 39 where alcoholic liver disease was the underlying cause.
Matt McMullen, of the Sheffield Alcohol Support Service, said Beverley’s situation was “very sad”.
He added: “Unfortunately it is not unheard of for someone of such a young age to be experiencing such severe problems as a result of alcohol consumption.”
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