Monday

A slow start to the week today. Normally, I’m wide awake and up and about before my alarm goes off. Today, I hit the Dismiss button instead of Snooze. What woke me up was something being dropped through the letter box. All our tentative plans for the day were in bits and we hadn’t even got out of bed.

I’d forgotten that our neighbour had said she was going to have a rare day in the office and we’d volunteered to walk their dog. The ‘something’ being dropped through the letter box was her keys.

We checked Lesley’s dad’s webcam. He was up and dressed ready to be taken to his day centre but when Lesley spoke to him he said he didn’t feel great and had some back pain. She had to remind him to take some paracetamol. That’s the second time in a few days that he’s admitted to being in pain. As that could be a sign of his advancing mesothelioma I suggested that we keep some note somewhere so we can keep a check on whether the symptoms are getting worse. This note here will probably end up being that ‘somewhere’. Obviously, I’m aware that we’ll be reliant on him saying he’s in pain and that that’s going to be different from him actually being in pain. What’s likely to happen is that he’ll only say something if the pain is noticeably worse. If the pain stays constant he’ll just get used to it, accept it as the new normal and not say anything.

Later on we found out that he’d turned down the lift to the day centre. He hadn’t felt well enough. Given that going to the day centre is the only thing he cares about, that can’t be a good sign. If he ever does feel too unwell to go, he normally phones the manager to say so and that saves the volunteer driver a wasted journey. Today, he didn’t think to. It’s not possible to say whether that was the stress from the pain or his dementia that made him forget to but both probably contributed to that.

Later still we found out that after Lesley told him to take paracetamol for his back pain both the driver and someone at the day centre told him to too. I was concerned that he could have taken some each time he was told to. But it’s equally likely that he only took one dose. Or maybe none at all. It’s an issue that needs ironing out before he does himself more of a mischief though.

When I got to The Home I met Sean as I was getting out of the lift.

“She’s very active today” he said. “She’s rotating in the bed”

He wasn’t wrong.

In the hour that I spent there Mum calmed down to the point where she was dropping off to sleep. But she talked non-stop. Mostly unintelligibly. She had no memory of Eldest Sister being there with all her kids and new daughter-in-law. Mum was shocked when I showed her the wedding photo and said they’d been there.

Then she did recall having had visitors but thought that it had been this morning and whoever it was who’d come to see her had come with “Charlie…, and Charlie… and Charlie”.

While she was in a moment to remember visitors I tested her on something Eldest Sister had said yesterday.

“A little bird told me yesterday that you admitted pretending to be asleep when people ask things you don’t want to hear.”

She laughed. Guilty as charged. No further questions M’Lud.

Towards the end of the visit her Other People started arriving. There weren’t that many of them but only Uncle Tony was positively identified as being there with us. By this stage her speech was all but totally unintelligible but I’m fairly certain she called me John. I’ll have to look up the last time she referred to my Dad but it feels like it’s been months.

She did drink all her milkshake though.

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