Saturday

Got to Mum to find her in the transition from Hyperactive Mum to Sleepy Mum and she didn’t respond to me when I walked in her room.

“Hello Mum! It’s Nick!… Nicholas. it’s Nicholas.”

Nothing.

The activity was still just about there as she fidgeted in slow motion and she looked at me once without seeming to see me. Perhaps she’d been aware that someone was there but just didn’t recognise me. I couldn’t tell.

I sat down and told her I was going to read to her for a bit. I thought it might help if she heard a familiar voice.

It didn’t.

Her eyes did flicker open a couple of times in the two paragraphs I read but then she yawned and settled down. Motionless. Sound asleep. Her hypoactive delirium phase had started.

Lesley had had a day with her dad. The laundry that the morning’s carer had started needed finishing, the stock of meds needed checking, the repeat prescription form needed filling and delivering to the pharmacy, some bits of shopping needed doing and he needed lunch and an evening meal.

When I’d checked on the webcam while the carer was with him he’d seemed alert and active. Lesley found him breathless and confused.

He’d been confused by the change of carer during the week.

“But I’d written you a note telling you which of them was turning up each day Dad. It’s right in front of you on the dining room table.”

“Is it!?”

He only sees what he’s expecting to see and hadn’t spotted it. I did wonder how useful that was because he’d been confused which day it was all week.

The only seeing what he expects to see thing isn’t new. He’s been like that for years. He is, or was, quite an accomplished watercolourist. He can paint a sky as well as anyone. But when you look at the body of his paintings they’re just all wrong. Reflections and shadows just don’t work like that. It’s like he’s looking without seeing.

But back to his confusion – it’s his meds too. Lesley organises his meds for him in a box with separate compartments for breakfast-time, mid-morning, lunchtime, afternoon and evening. He’s coped with that for a decade or more. Now he can’t. It’s true that he gets help with the ones he’s used to in the mornings but they’re not the worry. His GP says that it won’t matter too much in the great scheme of things if he misses a day and it wouldn’t be serious if he took two days worth on the same day. The worry is that he’s not getting the ones he should take during the day to manage his pain. Not taking any and suffering in silence would be bad enough but taking too many paracetamol could be dangerous. He is a worry.

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