Monday

Lesley’s dad has now been officially at the “He’s probably not going to last another 24 hours” stage for a week now. Reggie’s shift patterns at The Home where my Mum was mean that he doesn’t work on Tuesdays. He visited Dad today. Lesley said he stayed for ages. His best guess today was not more than another 48 hours. I can quite see him still being with us next weekend.

Lesley and her sister have been with him all the hours they can manage. He was so bad on Sunday night that Lesley’s sister didn’t go home. When he’s awake he’s fully aware that both his daughters are with him. He’s sufficiently aware of who is with him to be able to address them by name when he gives them a rocket for not helping him.

Yeah, the shouts of “HELP ME!!” are still going on but the frequency has dropped from the sound of things. After what has seemed like an eternity the nurses seem to have got his pain under control but his agitation is still distressing. He sounds anxious, angry and frustrated. It sounds like the demands for help are demands to get him out of bed so he can go home.

The physicality of his fight sounds a lot like my Mum’s at the end. Kicking his legs over the side of the bed? Check. Rolling his bedding up into a ball and throwing it off? Check. Randomly thrashing his arms around? Also check. It’s not an easy watch.

He’s asleep a lot of the time. Being with him is mind-numbingly boring when he’s asleep. Heart-breaking and gut-wrenching when he isn’t.

Being asleep all day could be down to how agitated he gets at night. He’d been showing signs of this for a few months. When he was at home he’d get up four, five, sometimes as many as ten times during the night. He get up and go to the toilet automatically because that’s what you do when you wake up in the night. Now when he wakes up, he’s anxious because he isn’t sure where he is, frustrated that he can’t get out of bed on his own and angry because nobody will help him. The half-a-dozen disturbances a night seem a piece of cake now. Last night he kept both of the nurses busy for their entire 12 hour shift as he tried to get out of bed literally every five minutes.

He had another visit from a nurse in his palliative care team today. Another different one. I don’t think he’s been seen by the same nurse twice. They’re supposed to be keeping track of his decline. Their note-taking skills would have to be phenomenal and recognising his decline when four different pairs of eyes have observed him would be a very clever trick to pull off successfully. Nobody thinks they’re pulling it off successfully. The palliative care nurse saw Dad while Lesley and her sister were taking a break. She then had a quick chat with the in-house nurses and left without speaking to anyone else. A change to Dad’s meds was authorised.

Afterwards, Lesley’s sister tackled the senior in-house nurse with a killer question.

“You’re a registered nurse right?”

“Yes.”

“So how come you need another nurse, a nurse who hasn’t seen him before, to authorise increasing his meds?”

The nurse just raised her eyebrows and smiled a “That’s exactly the right question and I have absolutely no idea but if you ever find out the answer would you kindly let me know?” smile.

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.