Sunday

Another early start for me today. Not generated by The Dog waking me up to be taken out to go to the toilet this time though. This was entirely my own doing.

I’ve been neglecting my writing. The problems and frustrations that I had been used to getting out of my head and onto the keyboard were still festering and fighting with the challenges of the days to come. The rumination was doing my head in.

I was also starting to feel a bit ropey physically. Not ill as such yet but the muscular aches and congestion in my head were a sign that something was coming. My worry was that the ‘something’ that was on its way was the collapse that I thought I’d have in the days immediately after Mum died if I stopped being busy.

And yesterday was the first day that wasn’t busy.

On the agenda today were a regulation visit to Lesley’s dad and following up a thread Lesley started yesterday. If we couldn’t find the right care home for Dad then we should look at ways of getting him extra help in his own home. Multiple visits a day, every day.

Our only experience of getting agency carers in the home had been with Lesley’s mum and my dad. But both of those were more than a decade ago and it would be different now.

Both of them had got to like their principal carer. The main issue with both of them was that the carers couldn’t guarantee to turn up at a specific time. It wasn’t a problem for either of them. Neither of them did anything or went anywhere.

The secondary issue was that it wasn’t always the principal carer who turned up because they obviously had to take time off sometime. That wasn’t an issue at all for either of them either. Neither of them was alone in the house and had to let a complete stranger in.

But both of those are huge issues for Lesley’s dad. He is on his own and has already shown signs he’s getting careless about letting strangers in. If he gets used to letting people he doesn’t recognise in then who knows what the dangers are.

Also, his three days a week at his day centre are literally the only thing he cares about. If a carer doesn’t turn up on time he wouldn’t be ready and would miss his lift. Or he may try and get himself up and ready and risk a fall.

Any of those would be the end of the world for him.

We got the first part of the agenda under way. That started with a brief detour via M&S Food. Lesley phoned him to tell him we were on our way. Fortunately, I could only hear one end of the conversation.

“Dad? DAD! It’s me… Good… No need to get yourself a meal. We’ve been to Marksie’s for you… NO! A MEAL!… NO! NOT JOHN PEEL! A MEAL!… YOUR DINNER!… DINNER!… … NEVER MIND, WE’RE ON OUR WAY!”

“That sounded like hard work”

“Yeah. And he said he wasn’t feeling too good either.”

Great.

He was vague and non-descript when Lesley asked what the problem was but when she was out of earshot he told me it was “painful waterworks”. I’m told that that’s typical of his generation. They’re all cagey, oblique and euphemistic when describing any problem Below The Waist.

He was vague again when we tried to ask him how much he’d had to drink so far today. He couldn’t grasp that “I was just going to make a cup of tea when you came in” didn’t answer the question. It was hard not to suspect that the actual answer was not very much at all apart from a few sips of water when he took his meds. At least he’d taken his meds today.

But we’re talking about a man who used to drink tea for England. He’d drain pot after pot. Now he can’t manage more than half a cup. We’re also talking about a man who would need the bathroom every half an hour at least. He was famous for not being able to walk past a public convenience without having to go in and use the facilities. He didn’t go once in more than four hours while we were there.

He’s not eating properly either. The meal that he’d told us he’d had yesterday was still in the fridge when we arrived today. That made me wonder about something.

What little he does eat, that I’ve seen at least, is protein. When he gets a meal he picks out the meat but the potatoes, pasta, rice and/or vegetables all end up in the bin. I’m as guilty as everyone else is of jumping to the conclusion that “painful waterworks” is an indication of another UTI. But he’s had a series of bouts of this and the results have been coming back negative. There’s probably no way of finding out if there’s a history of kidney stones in his family but a high proportion of protein in the diet, a totally sedentary lifestyle and severe, chronic dehydration might give cause to look for another explanation. His pee is certainly dark and pungent. And passing a kidney stone would certainly count as “painful waterworks” in my book.

But he can’t see what the problem is and swears he’s drinking all the time.

Oh, and his breathlessness was bad today too.

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