Friday

Today was The Big Day. This was Lesley’s dad’s first look inside a care home in maybe 30 or even 40 years. Lesley was taking him and her sister and brother-in-law to The Home for a long lunch and a look round. The Dog and I would be home alone again. My final instruction as Lesley left was to make sure The Dog got her worming tablet.

Great.

The Dog wasn’t happy about the situation at all. She’s fed up with Lesley leaving the house all stressed. The walk was very low key. It was made all the more sombre by a message from Reggie. Audrey had been taken to hospital.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d only been talking to her yesterday afternoon. She’d said that she didn’t feel great, that she felt like “death warmed up” and from what little I could understand she’d said a doctor had been to see her. She’d asked me how she looked.

“As lovely as ever! You’re not ready for the knacker’s yard yet!”

She hadn’t been herself though. Not eating. Didn’t touch her coffee. But taken to the hospital!?

Bloody hell.

We got home and I fished some chicken thighs that had been cooking overnight out of the slow cooker. The trick last time had been to cut the worming tablet up into small pieces and wrap them in chicken skin. It worked a treat last time. Would she touch them? Not a chance.

I had a mountain of stuff sitting on my desk that needed my attention including some bills for Mum’s stay at The Home. Her local authority had taken an age to sort out her change of care home in their billing system and six months worth of invoices turned up a few days before she died.

With all the admin piling up and a sense of overwhelm looming over me I did the obvious thing – something else entirely. Laundry, washing up, sorting out the recycling, another three failed attempts at getting The Dog to eat her worming tablet… All seemed more attractive than what I should’ve been doing.

I got a full debrief on The Visit when Lesley got back. In spite of her sister losing it and dissolving in tears, the visit seemed to have gone better than I dared hope. Dad seemed pleasantly surprised by seeing what The Home looked like. He enjoyed his lunch and even liked some of the rooms although, sadly, not the one that was vacant.

The Manager handled the naïve questions firmly.

“Could Dad stay here short term for respite?”

“No.”

“But your website says you do respite care”

“Respite stays are a lot of hard work for us. If I had a lot of empty rooms I would consider it but we’re nearly always full so I don’t have to.”

“Oh”

There were quite a lot of examples of Lesley’s sister’s desperate notions being solidly blocked.

Good.

“What did you have for lunch?”

“Dad had fish & chips, I had gammon, egg & chips”

“What about the other two?”

“They wouldn’t eat anything.”

“But didn’t anyone explain the thing about people with dementia eating more if they aren’t eating on their own?”

I already knew the answer to that one before I’d asked it.

Lesley told me about another question.

“When will one of the big rooms become available?”

I couldn’t believe the question had been asked. Neither could I believe that there was any surprise that the question couldn’t be answered. What was she thinking? Not much, apparently. What did she think had to happen for a room to become available?

The offer on the table was for Dad to take the smaller room – the only room that was currently available – and take a position at the head of the queue for a big room when one was free at the same cost as the small one.

It seemed like a no-brainer to me. But, unfortunately, not to Lesley’s sister.

“I think we should keep Dad at home until a big room is ready for him”

The Manager had said privately to Lesley that her sister “wasn’t ready”

“Bloody hell! It just like being back at school waiting for the slow ones at the back of the class to catch up!”

Lesley’s dad has no good options left. This offer looked like his least worst option. Well, to everyone except Lesley’s sister.

“I’ve arranged for an agency to come and assess him on Monday and a senior nurse from the Palliative Care team will see him on Tuesday. From what the agency said on the phone, they’ll be pushing for live-in care. Nobody wants that. But if they will say in front of her that he needs 24/7 care then she just has to see sense.”

“Well you better hope that they do say that because while everyone is dancing round your sister trying not to upset her, the room at The Home is going to go to somebody else. Dad’s lost one of the carers he knows and likes because he’s had to move to a new flat. So Dad’s left with less care than he had – which was already way less than he needs – and he could be weeks away from a room at the only home we like. She’ll be getting on a plane home at the end of next week leaving him worse off and you getting all the blame for whatever happens. Whatever you do she’s not going to like it.”

“I know. But what can I do?”

I do have some clear ideas what Lesley can do but airing them won’t help. Seething is about all I can safely do. That and hope that the professionals say out loud what everyone is thinking and hope that the room at The Home doesn’t get snapped up. Even I drew the line at hoping that a resident in a bigger room shuffled off their mortal coil this week and left a convenient vacancy. I couldn’t wish that on anyone just to avoid Lesley’s sister’s fragile feelings being hurt.

Give me strength!

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