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Secretly caring for my mother
Eddie Mair speaks to Phyllis Whitsell about caring for the mother she thought had died.
Phyllis Whitsell was adopted as a child, and was never told her mother's name, only that she had died of tuberculosis.
Phyllis eventually became a nurse and discovered that her mother was alive and an alcoholic. She spent the following nine years caring for her mum as she descended into mental decline. But, as she reveals to Eddie, Phyllis never told her mother that she was her daughter until it was too late.
