Tuesday

We were both a bit preoccupied while walking The Dog this morning.

“What are we going to do about getting these guys in to help your dad?” I asked.

He was digging his heels in about accepting the help Lesley had organised for him. Introducing the two carers together had confused him. He thought they would be working together. He thought that the local lady who does his cleaning would be enough. She’d already said she was no longer confident that he was safe in the bath as he had got so weak and wobbly and she wasn’t strong enough. She had already said that she didn’t want to get to him any earlier than mid morning, she didn’t want to work any extra hours for him and she wasn’t trained to prepare any of the more dangerous meds he’d been prescribed.

He’s been clear for years that the one thing he wanted to avoid was going into a nursing home. Once again it feels like everything he’s saying and doing will only guarantee that the thing he least wants is the thing that will be the most likely outcome.

“There’s no point arguing with him,” I said, “he’s always been immune to facts and logic and it’s got even worse now his dementia is so bad. The one thing I know about dealing with people suffering from dementia is that you shouldn’t challenge their reality. It won’t change anything and it just upsets them. There’s only one situation where that rule doesn’t apply and that’s when they’re about to do something that will harm them. He’s definitely going to be worse off if we don’t get these guys in. I think we just do it.”

“Well, I don’t know…”

“Have you asked your sister? He always does what she says…”

“Tried that. He won’t have it”

“We can’t ask the team at his day centre to tell him to accept it. That wouldn’t be reasonable.”

“No, we can’t do that.”

“So I think we just tell him it’s happening. It’ll be one of those things where they say they don’t want something and then won’t give it up once they’ve got it. Why don’t I ask someone at The Home how they’d handle it when I get there later?”

On my way through to The Home I stopped off at my GP surgery to find out what happened with my hypertension review that had been scheduled on Friday. The receptionist didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised that the call hadn’t happened.

“Did you get a notification that the appointment was cancelled?”

“No, it didn’t get cancelled. It was still showing on your system on Friday evening. I took a screenshot.”

“Were you told it had been rescheduled for tomorrow morning?”

“Er, no.”

Meanwhile, Eldest Sister had sent a message saying she’d be visiting Mum on Sunday. With no little confidence I told her that she should be in luck after a couple of visits where Mum hadn’t woken up at all. Mum’s current schedule indicated that she’d have her Sound Asleep and Completely Unresponsive day on Thursday this week which meant she would be wide awake again by Sunday.

That prediction didn’t last long at all. Mum was already sound asleep when I got to her just after lunch. Her designated carer rushed into Mum’s room when she saw me.

“Your Mum hasn’t had anything to drink since breakfast and she spat her lunch out again.”

“Again? You mean she does it a lot?”

I tried giving Mum a drink of squash. She accepted the spout in her mouth alright but I didn’t think she took any liquid in.

A couple of times recently I’d had to move Mum in bed to make her more comfortable and I’d noticed how much lighter she’d felt. She has next to no muscle at all on her arms.

I heard Reggie laughing in the lounge and headed off to see what I could find out. He confirmed that Mum had really only eaten a substantial meal at breakfast for a little while now and they’d struggled to get her to finish her fortified milkshakes too.

“What’s her weight chart looking like?”

He showed me. Mum’s weight had been steady at 50 to 52kg for a year but in the last three or four weeks she’d dropped to just over 44kg.

Mum’s Sleepy phases were lasting longer and the energy and activity when she was at her peak was a lot lower. The periods she was awake for were shorter too – markedly so in this cycle. Hardly surprising when she was losing that much weight.

Bloody hell

“By the way Reggie, we’ve got this situation with Lesley’s dad…”

His view? Tell him he’s got a simple choice: either accept the extra help now from people able and willing to help and stay at home a bit longer or face up to needing to go in a nursing home or hospice sooner rather than later. Make the choice his but make sure the choice is a stark one. 

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