Thursday

Lesley’s dad’s carer this morning was the lady he knows from his day centre. Unlike the guys that I know, she won’t get there at 7:30 or 8 as he is waking up. So when she let herself in he was already up and dressed. Obviously, he refused a bath. That means we won’t know how badly he hurt himself when he fell yesterday. Later on, Lesley got a bit of pushback from her.

On her last visit to Dad, Lesley’s sister had told the carer what she wanted doing for Dad and when she wanted it done. The carer agreed at the time to avoid having an argument in front of Dad. In less than a month she’s had enough. She wasn’t doing all the extra and she would turn up when she could get there. If Lesley’s dad didn’t like her so much I think she’d be eased out.

Bloody hell.

After walking The Dog I headed off to The Home only to be met by a forest of ROAD CLOSED signs. The Thames had burst its banks and the bridge I usually use was closed. I saw later that the local paper’s website had pictures of the river flowing over the bridge as well as round it.

It was flooded round The Home too. The farm next door was badly affected. The field that was full of sheep yesterday was now under a couple of feet of water. It did make for some nice photos though with the low afternoon sun.

I still couldn’t work out where Mum was in her Sleepy/Active cycle. She’d come out of her last Sleepy phase on Saturday and that day had been normal for Day One Awake: Unhappy, Uncomfortable, Uncommunicative and Uncooperative.

Ordinarily, she would have got more and more animated and her hallucinations would’ve got stronger and more vivid over the next few days before going into another Sleepy phase.

Not this week though. It’s been a weird week.

Mum seemed to have got stuck at Day One this week and has repeated it every day since Saturday. Being Unhappy, Uncomfortable, Uncommunicative and Uncooperative is bad enough but when she’s like this she won’t eat. She’s been drinking plenty but won’t eat anything.

Even by this week’s standards, Mum was uncommunicative today. It wasn’t that she was muttering or mumbling especially indistinctly either. She just wasn’t trying to speak at all. She only said two words the entire time I was with her.

“Your milkshake’s arrived Mum!”

“Oh good.” she said clearly.

And that was it. She drank her milkshake and dozed off clenching my hand.

Reggie joined us. He’d been working downstairs this week so hadn’t spent any time with Mum. He was obviously expecting Mum to have been hallucinating though.

“Hello Iris! How are you? How’s Barbara today?”

Mum said nothing and just looked confused. The look on her face definitely said “What’s he talking about her for!?”

“She isn’t here today Reggie.” I explained, “Nobody is. I don’t know what’s going on because she’s had no hallucinations all week.”

“Really?”

He didn’t stay long. A few of the other residents had been under the weather this week. I’d already noticed how much quieter Eleanor and Betty had been over the past few days. Perhaps Mum had had whatever it was too.

Mum was asleep when I left her. I couldn’t tell whether she’d gone full-on Sleepy phase asleep or had just nodded off after having a milkshake. She was doing the slow-motion fidgeting that she does when going into a Sleepy phase but was she doing it enough for me to be certain? I didn’t know. I’m not certain of anything now.

I met the nurse in charge on the top floor as I was waiting for the lift.

“I think Mum’s gone to sleep.”

“Oh, OK.”

“I don’t know whether this is it for the next couple of days or not. It’s been such a weird week. No hallucinations at all.”

“Yeah, she has been very quiet.”

“To be honest, I’ve been willing the Other People to appear for days because Mum’s so bloody miserable when they aren’t there.”

Bloody hell.

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