Friday

A trip to hospital in Oxford for Lesley’s dad today for his rescheduled MRI scan.

“I’ve had no sleep again.” Lesley said, “Will you take us?”

She didn’t need to ask. One look at her told me she wasn’t fit to drive.

I waited outside The Home for Lesley to emerge with her dad. Reggie and Al greeted me warmly as they passed. It was nice to be back.

Dad was wheeled out. Quiet and unshaven. He apparently only has a shave if either Reggie or Sean are available to do it for him. He won’t let anyone else do it.

The journey to The Hospital was completed in near silence. Dad was the only one to say anything.

“Where are we going?”

As the appointment was scheduled to be only half an hour The Dog and I waited outside in the carpark. The Dog almost handled if perfectly. The Dog is quite ableist and the problem with waiting in a disabled parking bay is that every other car around us is either loading or unloading someone in a wheelchair. And they’re slow. And close. But she kept her composure for the first four or five. After that, she lost it whenever anything moved.

Lesley returned. Alone.

“Will you go and get him? I can’t get his wheelchair over the lip of the door.”

The trip back to The Home was silent again except for the occasional whistle from Dad’s hearing aids when he put his hands over them to check whether they were still working. From the phone alerts going off in the back of the car, Lesley was already dealing with a barrage of WhatsApp messages as her sister dished out her instructions and dispensed her wisdom from several time-zones away.

Dad remained silent when we arrived at The Home and didn’t say “Here we are at the prison!” again.

“Just wait there a minute Dad while we get your wheelchair ready and Nick’ll come round to let you out.”

“Yeah.”

I’d barely switched the engine off before he was struggling with his seat belt and hunting for the door handle. Was it the Alzheimer’s that had removed his sense of time, his habit of saying Yes when he hadn’t really heard or his increasing bad temper and frustration? All of the above probably.

A gaggle of staff emerged to help him into the building. Their desire to care is staggering given the abuse they get from him. Compared to my decades-long intolerance of him it’s truly humbling.

Bloody hell.

Image Credit

Original image by Nick Gilmore. February 2025