Thursday

So. We are dealing with a father who is seriously ill and nearing end of life and a mum who needs daily visits at her nursing home. Just when we though things couldn’t get any worse, we decide that The Dog needs to go to The Vet. As if having to get up and let her out in the garden two or three times during the night wasn’t bad enough, I suspect there is blood in her poo, she’s barely eating anything and she just looks miserable.

Obviously, today is one of the days when the village branch of the practise we use isn’t open but we manage to get an appointment with a vet that knows The Dog who is at the head office. The Vet is amazing in spite of the fact that The Dog won’t let her touch her. The thing that blew my mind was how The Vet could tell by the smell of The Dog what was wrong.

We got the first dose of antibiotics in The Dog before she realised what was happening. The second, a few hours later, was much more awkward. She was already wise to us messing around with her food and hand-feeding her. It doesn’t matter what meds we have to give her, she has a real aversion to eating anything remotely medicinal.

Speaking of which…

The mood at The Home was much the same as it had been yesterday but with an extra helping of awkwardness. The only meds refusal I actually witnessed was by Annie.

“You’re giving out pills like pop, Pop, POP! My father was a doctor, my husband was a doctor and my son is a doctor. I want to speak to them first!”

She’s 101 years old and has outlived all of them.

And she wanted to know where her taxi was because she didn’t want to be late. The level of intent to escape hadn’t subsided for any of the residents.

But Mum was cheerful, chatty, calm, compliant and comfortable when I got there just like yesterday. She nattered away until Reggie came in to grass her up.

“We had a Both Legs Over The Bedrail situation this morning. Didn’t we Iris?”

Mum had a good go at an Innocent Face and then laughed.

“And when I told you it was time for your meds you asked what they were for and then said you didn’t want them. Didn’t you Iris?”

She just looked blankly at us both.

“Has he mistaken you for someone else Mum?”

She laughed again.

Her level of animation increased steadily the more she talked. No Other People to start with but hordes an hour later. Telling me to sit down and leave it a minute when giving me an instruction to start with but plenty of “Go on! Do it!! QUICK!!!” an hour later.

Reggie found me standing in the corridor outside Mum’s room at one point. He’d immediately twigged that I performing a Standard Operating Procedure for one of Mum’s Late Cycle Impossible Instructions.

“Counting to ten Nick?”

“Of course!”

“What have you got to do?”

“I have absolutely no idea. I couldn’t understand a word of it”

He laughed and I completed the SOP by going back in and reporting that the task had been successfully carried out.

I witnessed a low-key, slow motion edition of The Balling Of The Sheet. Just the sheet. The blanket was being left for the Other People still asleep in her bed.

After having rolled the sheet up she ran out of steam. She didn’t have the energy to get to the “Here. Take this. We’re going home!” stage. My guess was that wasn’t far away though.

“You look tired Mum. Why don’t you have forty winks and I’ll come back and sort the rest out later?”

“Alright”

I tried, and failed, to leave before she opened her eyes again

“And don’t be long!”

Bloody hell

Bibliography

Tales from the Parish: 31 humorous short stories about community, family and village life, set in the English countryside

Kindle Edition

by Stefania Hartley

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