Tuesday

Starting the family update with “Another long day for Lesley visiting her dad” seems to happening more often. That’s to be expected though. He seemed to be doing OK. He was slightly confused by missing his day centre session yesterday and we’d seen him getting himself ready to be picked up on a non day centre day but by the time Lesley had got there he’d worked it out. I took it as a positive thing that he seemed to accept that stoically enduring pain unnecessarily isn’t big or clever. It’s fine while he can use paracetamol to manage it. Things might change when he needs something stronger.

Ending the family update with “Mum’s sound asleep and completely unresponsive” has become a bit more frequent too.

I did the standard test – say “HELLO MUM! IT’S NICHOLAS!!” three times very loudly – she didn’t move a muscle.

You can tell what sort of day she’s had by how long the queue of untouched drinks on her table is. She had a full set today. She’d barely had 100ml by the looks of what was left.

Eleanor has the room next door to Mum now. I don’t think she’s adapting well to the new home. Before the transfer she was always in one lounge or other. Now, I often see her sitting alone in her room.

It has to be said that when she was in a group in a lounge she’d be arguing with someone but at least she was interacting with real people. It also has to be said that when she’s in her room she isn’t alone. She has all her soft toys to keep her company. Before the transfer she would refer to the toys as her children. Now she sometimes refers to them as The Animals. Her worry hasn’t changed though – they still hadn’t had anything to eat.

“Hello Eleanor! Are you alright?” I said as I passed her room.

“I’m fed up!”

I could see she was more fed up than usual as she hadn’t bothered to put her teeth in. She was sitting in her chair and a toy lion wrapped in blanket was on her lap.

“Look at this little boy. He’s starving. I don’t know how to look after this lot, I really don’t.”

“Seems to me you’re doing a great job Eleanor. He looks in good shape. They all do.”

“Aah, he’s lovely though isn’t he? He just wants to play and nobody here will play with him. They’re all miserable.”

“Everybody here seems very nice Eleanor. They’re just busy all the time.”

“No they’re not. They’re miserable. The lot of them. Where are you going anyway?”

“I’m going home.”

“What!? Again!? Well, give everyone there my love.”

“Thank-you! That’s very kind of you Eleanor. I’ll do that.”

Bloody hell

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