Tuesday. D-Day + 1

Lesley had hit a wall. The stress of months and months of being her Dad’s primary carer, the struggle since Christmas with his failing health, the struggle with her family to get Dad into a home and several sleepless nights at his house all caved in on her. She was incapable of action or thought.

“No calls from The Home overnight then. That’s a good sign.” I said.

Then I remembered that Lesley switches her phone off overnight.

“Let’s get The Dog walked and then I’ll do the first visit. I’ll go to Tesco afterwards and you can see your dad later.”

A group of nurses and carers were walking towards reception as I signed in.

“Hello Ladies! Just like old times isn’t it? Back here every day!”

“Yes! You were missed!”

Lovely.

Dad was sound asleep when I got to him. Hardly surprising.

I asked how he’d been. Nothing untoward was mentioned other than he hadn’t wanted prunes on his porridge and that he’d asked to go back to bed at 11.

I didn’t wake him. I headed upstairs to see the ladies in the lounge. Audrey was missing again but the others were asleep too.

I’d seen the Anita but she was doing a meds round and was wearing the bib warning that she wasn’t to be interrupted. So I didn’t.

“Where’s Audrey?” I asked when the Anita came to find me.

“She’s in bed today.”

“Is she accepting visitors?”

“Yes. Come on. I’ll wake her up.”

She was pleased to see me but was clearly unwell. Her speech was slow but clear and, to start with at least, her vocabulary was good. But she soon reverted to the flurry of made-up words that she relies on when she’s tired. I did all the usual enthusiastic agreement to what she said, all the “Yes, that makes perfect sense.” to stuff that nobody could possibly understand. Anita stood quietly and smiled at how happy she was.

“Right. I can see you’re tired so I’m going to leave you to get your beauty-sleep. Not that you need it!”

“So what happened?” I asked as we left the room.

“She had a seizure.”

I Googled that as soon as I got to the car and stopped worrying.

I got home, unloaded the shopping, walked The Dog with Lesley and had a cup of tea before she left to do her first visit.

She was met with a completely different account of how Dad had been from the staff from the one I’d been given.

He was furious. Furious that I’d been and not woken him, furious at the staff who “didn’t know what they were doing” and furious at Lesley for putting him in such a hell-hole.

He had woken in the night and had got up to go to the toilet as he usually does. The night shift were alerted by the alarm from the crash mat by his bed. When they got to him they’d found him on the floor. Naturally, they wanted to check him over before they lifted him up. He wasn’t used to that. He demanded that they call an ambulance and the fire brigade because they didn’t know what they were doing. He shouted and swore at them until he was back on his feet and had shouted and sworn some more. He had been aggressive and abusive to every member of staff who came near him since too.

The Manager shared her view with Lesley.

“This isn’t going to work. I don’t think he will ever settle after this.”

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