Monday

We started the day with the regular check on Lesley’s dad with the webcam. Instead of seeing him coming down on the stairlift followed by the carer we saw that he was up and fully dressed and that he was going to the kitchen. He switched the light off and headed back to the living room. He switched the light off there too.

Lesley phoned him wile he was close to a handset.

“Dad? DAD! What are you doing?”

“I’m fine.”

No, what are you doing?”

“I’m just locking the doors and switching the lights off before I go to bed.”

“Are you alright?”

“Well, I feel a bit stiff…”

“Oh blimey!” I thought, “He’s been in the armchair all night! He’s just woken up and looked at the clock and he thinks it’s 7:30pm last night not 7:30am this morning.”

His carer was going to be a bit late today. We’d already warned him that he’d have to go to Dad’s via the GP surgery to pick up a urine sample pot. Dad’s usual GP wasn’t available and the doctor Lesley managed to get an appointment with insisted on a face to face appointment. And Dad would have to produce a sample to test. That was going to be a challenge.

Dad failed to produce a sample while the carer was there and slept in his armchair for a couple of hours more. A couple of check-ins later, we saw a development. Dad was awake. The drinks the carer had prepared were still on the trolley by the armchair. They were still untouched. Beside them was the sample pot the carer had picked up earlier. Only now the sample pot wasn’t empty.

I could see the alarm on Lesley’s face.

“He’ll be pushing his trolley to the front door when his lunch is delivered and right in the middle of it is a pot of dark, stinky… Oh that’s gross!”

She tried phoning him to get him to move it but couldn’t make herself heard. He just kept talking which is a tactic he employs to cover up his inability to hear.

Lesley decided to do the trip over to him on her own. Her reasoning was that she didn’t want to put The Dog through yet another stressful visit. Dad’s house is oppressively hot. The Dog hates that. Lesley was going to be stressed. The Dog hates that too. We would have to at least raise our voices if not bellow right into his face to make ourselves heard. The Dog really hates people shouting.

Lesley unloaded when she eventually returned home.

“The doctor was lovely. It helped that it was a man. His voice was deeper and Dad could hear better. The doctor agreed that it’s a UTI so that’s what he’s being treated for.”

It sounded like Dad had had some profound moments.

“He said he felt completely lost yesterday. Like his world was falling apart around him.”

“He said he thought his time was coming to an end.”

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