Nursing Home

By Nick Gilmore

Published: 5 Jan, 2024

Friday

Mum was unexpectedly not sound asleep when I got to The Home today. Her voice was so thin and weak that I couldn’t make out a word she was saying though.

I got the distinct impression that my guesses about what she’d said and my as-non-committal-as-possible answers didn’t have a very good success rate.

I told her about my day. That we’d been able to give The Dog a decent walk for the first time in a couple of days but still had to do a couple of about turns when we found the road blocked by flood water. Mum asked if our house had been flooded and was reassured to learn that it hadn’t. Towns further down-river had been though and pictures made it into The Guardian today. Once I’d worked out where the pictures were taken I was disappointed to see that they were of the island ( the posh gits there call it an Eyot) just east of the town centre which floods every winter and the houses are built on stilts. Where Brother lives made it into the same photoset and there was a photo of a man kayaking down his street.

Then there was the rigmarole around trying to organise catering for Lesley’s dad’s Big Birthday  Bash next weekend. Mum asked if Lesley’s Sister had gone back yet. She had. She came over in November so it’s interesting how certain things stick in Mum’s memory and how long they stick for.

She perked up and spoke clearly twice. Once when I told her that we’d posted Barb’s birthday card and then when Sue messaged me to find out if Mum was likely to be at all responsive on Sunday. I typed (and then deleted) “Fucked if I know!” but then mum stirred.

“Mum? Sue’s thinking of coming to see you on Sunday. What do you reckon?”

“Ooh! That would be nice!”

I retyped a reply to Sue saying something along the lines of if mum’s sleepy all day tomorrow again then by Sunday she should be on the way back up. But thinking about it afterwards, Mum’s bed looked as if it was freshly made when I saw her yesterday. That means she hadn’t moved a muscle in the 4 hours between her post-lunch pad change and my arrival. Today however, her bed looked wrecked and I had to remake it to make sure she was covered. So perhaps she was already on her way back up.

“Mum? Sue’s asked if she should bring Curtis”

“Who?”

“The dog. She wants to know if the dog can come”

“Don’t see why not”

And with that she appeared to go back to sleep. I’d run out of things to talk about by that stage so started reading.

I tell a lie. Mum perked up and spoke clearly three times, not two. The third time was when I thought she’d gone soundly to sleep so I stopped reading and said I thought I’d better go and get my dinner.

Bloody hell.

Oh, with regard to the discussion we’d had about mum’s weight and how she seemed weak and thin now, I stopped at the office and had a chat with Steve. He brought up Mum’s chart. I was horrified. It was up and down all over the place and then showed a distinct decline over the past month. Then I looked more closely and saw that the scale on the weight axis ran between 49 and 51kg. So that disastrous looking decline was actually only 1kg over the course of a month and nothing to worry about at all.

Author’s Note

My Mum is in a nursing home in a small village in the Thames Valley. The photo is not of the home. I used an AI image generator to give the reader some idea of the home she’s in.

All, some or maybe even none (you’ll never know!) of the names have been changed to protect privacy and hide real identities. If you think you recognise someone then let me know and I’ll edit the post or remove it entirely

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