Saturday

Lesley’s Dad’s condition had been so poor yesterday that her sister had stayed with him overnight. But there were no calls and no messages waiting so we hadn’t slept through any major developments.

The news was that Dad had had a difficult night and had been shouting “HELP ME!!” for most of it. Once 12 hours had passed since the syringe driver had been activated he’d become calm and comfortable. It wasn’t all plain sailing. He’d had a line fitted in his thigh to make the multitude of injections easier to manage. At some point he’d found something he didn’t recognised taped to his leg and he’d picked off the plaster and ripped it out.

Lesley said that he had a pretty reasonable day while she was with him. He hadn’t eaten much but had had three meals. He’d even been lucid enough to hold a rudimentary conversation even if it was a little monosyllabic.

The difference in Lesley was huge. There hadn’t been any instances where he’d been so distressed that Lesley had had to leave the room. She came home far less stressed than she had in a long time.

The impact of the reduction in stress levels was apparent all through the day. Lesley described it as the relationship with the nursing team “thawing”. She was complimented by one carer for remembering her name. Another had made sure she had some lunch. It sounded like she was beginning to feel as much a part of the team as I had at The Home where my Mum had been. That she wasn’t so preoccupied by her dad’s decline must have played a part in that even if she hadn’t realised it.

And Dad? For a man who had been expected to expire within 24 hours every day since Tuesday,  a man who had been given only a few months to live exactly a year ago, he was still putting up quite a fight.

I did wonder about trying to manage Lesley’s expectations. That one good day didn’t mean that much. That my Mum had ups and downs in her final days too. That there weren’t that many Ups and the Downs were always big ones.

But I thought it best not to say anything.

Bloody hell.

Author’s Note

My Mum was in a nursing home in the Thames Valley for a year and a half until she passed away in December 2024. My Father-in-law went into the same home the following January. But Lesley’s sister didn’t approve and made the situation so awkward that he had to be moved. The image is not of the home itself. I used AI to generate an image of a typical modern nursing home. Names and locations have been changed or hidden to protect the identities of those involved. Which, for the new home, is probably just as well.