Saturday

We received a copy of the report that was produced following Lesley’s dad’s recent visit to  hospital this morning. It was an interesting read. The narrative part was a really good justification for the outcome the consultant presented on the day of the appointment. But the report included the plain results of the tests he’d done. One of them was the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. That’s the one Donald tRump claims to have ‘aced’ although academics familiar with the test don’t recognise some of the questions The Orange One claims were in the version he took.

I had to look up what Lesley’s dad’s score actually meant and my initial reaction was

“Blimey! That’s low! That’s very low!”

One point less and it would’ve been really bad but, thinking about it, it didn’t seem unrepresentative of how he is when I see him. Still, he and Lesley were happy with the outcome. His immediate future was still in their hands but it was incredibly close to not being so.

Not having to go and visit Dad meant I got to The Home at a much more reasonable time today. The visit to Mum was a bit unusual. When a trolley full of meals came out of the lift shortly after I’d got to Mum’s room I thought I’d totally mis-timed my visit. Not gonna lie, my heart sank when I saw it.

Her tea looked a lot more appetising and manageable than the last meal I failed to feed her though. Two quarters of an egg mayo sandwich, a strawberry yoghurt and a cup of tea.

I don’t think I’ve ever had it easier. She polished the lot off. Slowly, obviously, but there were no arguments. She seemed to almost enjoy it.

Mum let me know fairly early on that her mum was still in the room with her.

When Reggie came round with Mum’s afternoon meds he was being shadowed by a nurse who usually only covered the ground floor. I gave her a quick thumbnail sketch of the characteristics of Mum’s Sleepy/Active cycle and where I thought we were – in the early Hallucination phase. I told her about Mum’s mum being there with us.

“Iris?” asked Reggie, “Is your mum here?”

“Yeah, she’s standing over there.”

It’s not usual for Mum to admit to seeing Other People when staff are around. Reggie sometimes gets the honour of being included in the group Mum will talk about them to but I had never seen Mum do it in front of someone she was meeting for the first time.

Mum was having a day when her sense of injustice had been triggered. I’ve only seen it a handful of times before at most.

Eldest Sister got the first mention. I couldn’t make out the detail of what had happened but Mum said she felt “so, so sorry” for her. I did get a few more opportunities to ask the right question and get more detail as the conversation looped past this topic a number of times. I failed every time.

Brother was next to get a mention. There was a long and rambling tale that I couldn’t understand at all with Brother’s name in the middle of it. That was the only word I could make out.

There was another tale where, I think, she’d got the blame for something. The only words I could make out in that one were “I don’t know what they expected us to do!”. I was told that tale a few times too.

But in between the stories of Eldest Sister being unfairly put-upon and Mum being fitted up for some misdemeanour or other, Mum was cheerful and chatty again. Provided what she was talking about didn’t take too long to relate, I could make out enough to stay in the conversation.

Her fussing with bedclothes and animation got noticeably worse during the visit and by the end we’d got to “Right. Take this. We’re going home.”

It was all very low key but this might have been the peak of this cycle.

Or maybe not.

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