Thursday - White Crow Workshop

The Day After

The walk with The Dog was much better than those we’d had recently. She was much more like her old self. Spirited and mischievous. But it was just me with her today.

Lesley had gone out early to see her dad and sister. Sister was due to fly home at the weekend so the pressure was on to follow up on Dad’s Palliative Care Nurse’s recommendation that he needed 24/7 residential nursing care before she left.

Sister had said she wanted to “be involved” in the decision about which home we should entrust him to.

I’m not sure “involvement” would be the word I’d choose to describe her desired role but never mind that.

To both Lesley and me, the decision seemed to be a no-brainer. Dad has no good options left. but moving him into The Home was the least worst by a long way.

We’d thought that The Home was far and away the best option locally for Mum. My experience over the past year and a half told us that the difference between The Home and anywhere else was actually greater than we’d first thought.

The problem was that “Anywhere Else” seemed to be Sister’s preferred choice even though she could never adequately describe why.

She had scratched around to look at another option and chose a home that was more like a “Facility” than a “Home”. Bright, new and gleaming but all Show and no Go. And the CQC reports showed a recent inspection after complaints. And all the residents looked like they were confined to their rooms. And there was only one member of staff visible.

Dad was overwhelmed by the whole experience and got the various homes muddled up when asked to decide which one he liked. I felt sorry for him. He’d been presented with a choice that was no choice at all and had still got confused. Sister’s inability or unwillingness to acknowledge how bad his dementia is was a real issue. Again.

The later it got without any update from Lesley the more I feared that the day was not going well for her.

I had been utterly flat all day. Perhaps unsurprisingly after yesterday.

I just frittered the day away scrolling through Instagram and going down YouTube rabbit holes.

But the Instagram Algorithm seemed to sense how well Lesley was getting on with her sister and how the resistance to the obvious best option was being presented by offering me this: