Nursing Home

By Nick Gilmore

Published: 26 Jul, 2024

Friday

Full day today.

We got to Lesley’s dad’s early. Firstly, to make sure The Dog got a good walk so she’d be tired and calm throughout the day. Secondly, to make sure we had time to get Dad cleaned up and changed if needs be. He was already set to go when we arrived. He’d got himself ready early because he had no idea what time his appointment at the hospital was. Either he’d read his calendar and had forgotten or he’d forgotten to change to his reading glasses and couldn’t read his calendar. No matter, he was ready.

While Lesley got a laundry load going, Dad offered me his latest opinion on why the central heating and hot water programming keeps changing. When his home help comes to assist with his bath she switches on the immersion heater. It must be her fault.

What I should have said was something along the lines of bearing it mind and having a word with her so as not to challenge the reality of a dementia sufferer unnecessarily. But I didn’t. I told him not to be ridiculous. His readiness to blame somebody else – again – had irked me.

With The Dog well exercised – she loves the walks in dad’s village – we headed off for his dementia assessment.

The highlight of the journey happened as we were sitting at traffic lights outside of a huge branch of McDonalds. The Dog let go a horrendous fart. Dad sniffs the aroma and says

“Mmm. You can smell the food!”

Lesley and I were gagging at the stench. Laughing and gagging.

Fortunately the appointment wasn’t an Oxford one this time but still at a hospital which was why I was driving. The standard operating procedure at hospitals is that I drop Lesley, her dad and his wheelchair off at the door and then start the miserable process of trying to find somewhere to park. It was too hot to keep The Dog in the car so we loitered in the shade of the trees outside the door to the clinic. The Dog was less stressed out of the car and less stressed to be where she’d last seen Lesley. She kept cool by rolling in the grass to the delight of passing staff and patients.

We have no idea how the assessment went as Dad met the medics on his own and by the time he’d come out for the results he’d forgotten what had been asked and what he’d said. Lesley did witness a repeat of the abbreviated test that he’d done before and he got his highest score yet.

The upshot was that they aren’t going to do anything. He isn’t so bad that he needs to go to a home for his own safety and that’s the outcome both he and Lesley wanted. He’s been referred back to local social services. My initial and cynical view was that they had done the bare minimum just to get him off a waiting list which is now so big that waits specifically for dementia services are making national headlines. But to be fair, they were aware of his mesothelioma diagnosis and judged that the pace of his mental decline was going to be rapidly overtaken by his physical decline. Taking him away from a home he’d lived in for half a century when the local voluntary support was so good would do much more harm than good.

Quite a lot of useful leaflets were provided at the end of the meeting. But the meeting could have gone quite differently if Lesley had had the chance to read them before she went in. The question she felt tripped her up the most and the question she felt least prepared for was a simple one:

“What makes you think your relative has dementia?”

What she said was:

“If you ask him a question he will not be able to answer straight away but if you ask again a few minutes later he can answer immediately.”

I think I would have added:

  • frequently struggling to find the right word to express himself properly
  • inability to follow the logic of a conversation or a set of instructions
  • frequently disappearing into circular conversations
  • frequently repeating the same statement or question several times within a matter of minutes
  • only feeling comfortable talking at length about events from many years ago
  • recounting events from many years ago and getting the details wrong having forgotten that we’d heard different and possibly more accurate versions many times before
  • forgetting he’s already taken his meds and taking a second full set
  • forgetting how his phone works
  • not understanding his money
  • he barely passed the original AMTS and only then with the benefit of some generous marking. When asked the same questions later at home got even more of the answers wrong.

And that’s just for starters. Some of these he’s been doing for years. Other dementia symptoms are, of course, available.

Perhaps it was for the best that Lesley didn’t give a fuller answer. She and Dad got the outcome they both wanted so there was no need to risk changing anything.

It all seemed to be so finely balanced. Lesley said the consultant told her that had Dad got one more question right in that original test then he wouldn’t have been referred at all.

When we got him back home Lesley asked him what he’d had for lunch. The day centre volunteers should have delivered it while we were out walking The Dog and there was no sign of it when we returned so we assumed he’d eaten it.

“Oh, I forgot. It’s in the oven.”

I think he’d decided that he didn’t have time to eat it before we left for the hospital as he’d forgotten what time we said we were leaving. Whatever the reason, his lunch was unsalvageable and he’d missed a meal. Lesley got him something while we waited for the washing machine to finish the load that had started before we’d taken The Dog out. I’ve never known such a slow machine.

We got ourselves back home and had just finished eating when The Home phoned me.

“Nothing to worry about” they said. “Too late for that now” I thought.

They do a regular full-on, in-depth assessment of all the residents apparently and today was Mum’s turn. They were changing her meds. Because Mum has neither the strength nor inclination to move herself in bed much they have to go in and turn her every couple of hours and when they do that she gives clear signs of being in pain. They’re adding paracetamol to her list.

When I got to The Home I saw Reggie first. He told me that Mum had been drifting in and out of sleep today and asked if Eunice had called me. As Eunice hadn’t gone home yet I went to the office to have a further conversation with her.

I went back upstairs to find Mum wide awake. I asked her if she was up to getting Brother on a WhatsApp video call.

“Might as well…” she said

Mum loved it and there was plenty of talk of dogs and plenty of laughing. I explained to Mum that they were going to give her some extra medicine and that it would be in liquid form because she’s such a bugger for spitting out tablets. More laughter.

Mum’s voice was very quiet and indistinct so I’m not sure how much Brother heard. It wasn’t helped by the continuing racket in the corridor as Annie and Eleanor continued yesterday’s feud. But Mum kept going for about 20 minutes before she suddenly just conked out so we called it a day.

The warring parties outside Mum’s room were separated but the arrangement hadn’t been handed over to the night shift who promptly put them all back in the lounge whereupon it all kicked off again and Audrey got involved.

When the lady who does the evening drinks round came past she looked confused. She couldn’t understand why I was in Mum’s room.

“Hello!? What are you doing here?” she asked.

“This is my Mum.”

“Oh! I thought…. Never mind. Would you like a cup of tea?”

I found out she’d only ever seen me talking to Audrey before.

Mum was quite happy to hold the cup for herself today. While Mum drank her tea I explained the history – how in the last home I had to walk right through the building to get to Mum’s room, how that meant walking through the lounge past Audrey and Eleanor, how I was never allowed to ‘walk past’ Audrey and Eleanor without stopping to talk to them – and also explained why I wasn’t going to show my face in the lounge tonight.

“I don’t blame you,” she said “You’ll never get out”

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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