Sunday

I think today can safely be described as ‘A Bit Rubbish’.

I did the early morning check on Lesley’s dad’s webcam. He was nowhere in sight but his chairlift was downstairs and his walking frame was at the kitchen door. So he was at least up and about. I checked back five minutes later. He was still in the kitchen. And he was still there a further ten minutes later.

Some time later I watched him emerge from the kitchen, wobble his way through the dining room and collapse into his armchair. He looked exhausted. And he looked in pain. He kept screwing his face up in apparent agony, had one arm across his chest and was breathing heavily.

Lesley was due to visit him today. A standard ‘sort out his meds for the week, make sure he eats something and do a bit of laundry’ visit.

“Your dad looks terrible. I think I should drive you over there” I suggested.

“No, it’s OK. I’ll cope”

We checked the webcam again. He was talking. To the telly probably. But he seemed more comfortable.

Much, much later, Lesley returned. Mentally and physically exhausted. Yet another long day with her dad.

I got to The Home just as the night shift were arriving and came out of the lift to see Annie and Eleanor being separated. Again. The feud had clearly restarted after yesterday’s ceasefire.

“Hello Eleanor! How are you?”

“Oh! It’s you! I’m sorry. You always see me when I’m miserable.”

“But you’re smiling now though, right?”

She nodded.

“Good” I said, and carried on to Mum.

Mum was…. not right.

She was staring, wide-eyed, at something or someone floating above her and was talking to it/them. Nothing too unusual about that at this stage of her Sleepy/Active cycle. What was unusual was that she didn’t respond to me when I told her I was there. She didn’t seem to know where the voice was coming from. She seemed completely delirious.

It looked like she’d been like this for a while. The fortified milkshakes on her table had been there so long that they’d started to settle out.

But the worst thing was the cough. An awful, rattly cough from deep in her chest. There had been no sign of anything being wrong yesterday. This had come from nowhere. Obviously this was concerning because this whole journey had started with a bad case of pneumonia.

A passing nurse saw me and said

“Hello Nick! Everything alright?”

“No. I don’t think it is.”

He got a colleague to help him get Mum straight in bed. When I went back in to her room they’d got her sitting up but she was still staring upwards and muttering in conversation with one of her Other People. And the coughing was still awful. But instead of spitting or swallowing whatever she was coughing up she would just keep talking.

Even her responsiveness to me holding her hand became intermittent.

Even though she didn’t appear to be in any distress or even discomfort I couldn’t watch her struggle like that. I was content that the whole shift knew I thought Mum was struggling and I was confident that they’d be able to do whatever was necessary.

I switched off the overnight Do Not Disturb setting on my phone and went home.

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