Nursing Home

By Nick Gilmore

Published: 19 Oct, 2024

Saturday

When I saw Reggie yesterday evening he offered to message me when Mum woke up. That message arrived just after 4 this afternoon.

I didn’t get to The Home until after 7. We’d been at Lesley’s dad’s. More on that later.

On a standard First Day Awake after a Sleepy phase, Mum would normally be quite lucid. Lucid enough to know where she was and how poorly she was and lucid enough for that to make her utterly miserable. She’d be unhappy, uncommunicative and uncooperative.

This was not a standard Day One.

She was awake, mostly, and was trying to talk but it wasn’t I anything could understand and it wasn’t always to me.

Her breathing was still shallow and rapid but it didn’t seem as alarming as it had yesterday. Perhaps I was just adjusting my view of what normal was. Her cough was new though. I could hear thick coughs and croaky voices from the lounge opposite too. Everyone seemed to have caught some bug or other. That’s just what Mum needs.

On a positive note, perhaps the only positive note, she didn’t resist taking a drink when I offered it. She did need reminding to swallow each sip though.

Our day had started with a call from Lesley’s dad’s carer.

“Where are his meds? All I can find is a new dosset box and it’s empty. And it’s stiff too. He can’t open the lids.”

The new dosset box was supposed to be an addition rather than a replacement. Even though he complains every day about the pain in his back – a common symptom of mesothelioma – he isn’t taking paracetamol during the day. He takes them first thing because they’re with the morning meds that he’s used to taking. But meds are a morning thing and he doesn’t go back to his regular dosset box during the day. Getting an extra dosset box that he keeps on the table by his armchair seemed like a good idea. But this was too much for him process. He’d left the new extra one out for his carer – in spite of it being empty – and had put the regular one away somewhere.

“Don’t worry. We’re coming over.”

The heat as we opened his front door was overpowering. He’s got his thermostat set to ‘Furnace’.

“It’s incredibly hot in here. Are you comfortable?” were my first words to him.

“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”

 As usual, he was sitting with his fleece jacket on. Presumably because he always wears it rather than because he needed it.

Lesley asked him how his new glasses were. There was a worry about how he’d cope with bifocals.

“Alright I suppose. A guy at the day centre said he’d tried bifocals but couldn’t get on with them. He had to send then back.”

He later admitted that everyone bar this one person said they liked their bifocals. In spite of that, the view that he put most value in was the solitary negative one. That’s not his dementia though. He’s always been like that.

“Can you read your newspaper better now? Can you show me if there’s anything you can’t read?” Lesley asked.

He picked up the paper and took his glasses off.

Bloody hell.

While Lesley got on with the usual tasks – laying out meds for the coming week, sorting through the post, getting the laundry started and throwing out the food that he’d let go off in the fridge – I made him some lunch and then tackled the ‘technical’ issues.

He been missing out on cleaning his teeth because his electric toothbrush won’t charge. That was simple. The toothbrush will only sit on the base unit properly one way round. He, of course, has moved the base unit so it’s facing the wrong way. An easy fix but some thought will need to go into making it obvious to him that he’s done it wrong next time. There will be a next time.

The extra dosset box is indeed quite stiff. But then it’s new and the lids have got to be a bit stiff so they don’t all fly open when he inevitably drops it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there’s a knack to opening the lids and they’re actually easy when you get the technique right.

I showed him how to do it. He didn’t get it. Perhaps he just can’t see the little squeeze before the lift. I tried again. He was getting it but now but I saw that his hands aren’t quite big enough, or strong enough, to manage it. He doesn’t have the sensitivity in his fingers to squeeze in just the right place or the coordination to do the ‘squeeze then lift’ action needed either.

Back to the drawing board it is then.

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

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