OUR nightmare began with a phone call at around midnight.
We were told that Nan had suffered from a fall, and immediately we were concerned.
We could not understand it.
She had been unable to walk for the past three years and had never fallen from her chair at home.
She didn't have the strength to move herself, so how could she have fallen? That was all I was thinking.
But it was when I saw her on the hospital ward that the shock set in.
She looked like she had been beaten up. Both of her eyes were black and she had a large cut on her head.
It truly was unbelievable.
She was the woman who had brought me up. She was more like a mother to me, rather than a grandmother. And it was so upsetting to see her in this way.
Nurses told us she had tried to climb out of bed and fallen, but I couldn't get my head around how this could have happened.
They told me she had suffered from a fit of delirium and had tried to get up.
A few days later doctors discovered she had broken bones, which they had not initially detected.
Nan was always a very brave woman, she was widowed in 1979, and she did not like to moan.
I think in the end doctors and nurses didn't realise her bones were broken because she was like this.
Of course I was upset, but I am an optimistic person and I was just hoping and believing that she would get better.
I don't think she realised how bad her situation was, she was awake, but mentally not quite with it.
She died on October 16, 2011 – six days after the fall.
I always thought that she would have lived to 100 years old had it not been for this fall.
Since her death we have found it difficult to cope with what she went through.
We are not interested in compensation, we just want to make sure that no one else goes through what she did.
She had two children, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Everyone is devastated.
