Friday

Got to Mum just as she was starting to refuse her afternoon milkshake.

“Oh good. Hello Nick. Can you make sure she finishes this please?”

“OK Eve. I don’t take No for an answer now”

So after sitting Mum back up and making her comfortable we started tackling the milkshake. In between sips she was either crying or telling me not to leave her on her own. And then she had an epic coughing fit. I thought she was going to be sick she coughed so much. Then I remembered Glenys telling me that sweet stuff can make your saliva thicken and that that can lead to coughing. So after that I gave her a few sips of water after each batch of milkshake. But the coughing had exhausted her so I let her rest a bit first.

The milkshake took ages and was almost finished when Hakim arrived with her evening meal. Two Weetabix in cream with sugar. The first Weetabix was eaten quite quickly but she started saying “Don’t want no more” as we were starting the second. “Just a bit more” and “Nearly finished now” worked for a bit but she only managed half the second one before turning her head away. Without reading back through the notes I can’t be sure but I don’t think she’s needed to be reminded to swallow what she’s eating since she was on the stroke rehab ward at The Hospital. I had to do it twice today with the Weetabix and again with the last mouthful of milkshake.

I didn’t have any news so talked about the pissing rain instead. It had been biblical here for the past couple of days. I offered to read and she didn’t respond so carried on anyway. Yet another lap of Tales From The Parish is underway. Mum had started off largely unintelligible and by now had given up trying to talk altogether. She just held my hand, curled up and went to sleep.

This was the first visit in ages where there hadn’t been any Other People in the room with us. There wasn’t an awful lot of traffic in the corridor but Al and Jade did stop for a chat with me as they were passing. Mum didn’t respond to either of them but did try to hear what was going on when she heard a male voice asking Lily what she was doing just down the corridor. Mum was also barely out of a Sleepy Phase  and hallucinations aren’t generally strong at that stage but it had been a while since there hadn’t been any at all.

And she was incredibly weak today. Unusually so. At one point she wanted to roll over slightly and couldn’t because the weight of the duvet was too much for her.

Bibliography

Tales from the Parish: 31 humorous short stories about community, family and village life, set in the English countryside

Kindle Edition

by Stefania Hartley

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