Wednesday

Wednesday

While Lesley had been keeping her sister up to date of yesterday’s developments, I had been updating our friends. Several said the same thing…

“Moving!? Why!? Where!?”

“Dad is moving to a home in town. Lesley’s sister caused it. We’d discounted this home because the CQC report was so bad. A CQC inspection usually takes 2 days. Their last inspection took more than twice that. It was prompted by complaints that residents had been verbally abused by staff. They didn’t find sufficient evidence to support the claim. She saw this as total exoneration. We saw it as a massive red flag and that they’d found enough evidence to keep looking but not enough to make it stick. But it was fancy. The fees are astronomical so it should be. And she liked fancy. They shut their dementia residents away. She liked that too. No need for her to feel uncomfortable when she visits him there. She was impressed that they have fancy tech to alert them when residents try to move about unsupervised. They need fancy tech when they’ve got half the number of staff compared to his current home. And what’s the point of having all these alerts going off when they haven’t got anyone there to respond? But she is obsessed with the place. Just like she was obsessed with every home that wasn’t one that Lesley felt was any good.

“Nobody thinks it’s a good idea to uproot Dad from The Home when he’s starting to settle. Only one person on the planet thinks it is. And twice a week she Facetimes Dad to tell him how awful the home is, how the staff are useless and horrible and how he needs to move. Then she phones Lesley to tell her how miserable and confused Dad is, how it’s Lesley’s fault for putting him there and how she needs to fix it. Dad only gets this gaslighting twice a week. Lesley can get it as much as 20 or 25 times a day. Every day. Neither of them will get any peace until she gets her way.”

But having said all that, Dad had a good night’s sleep for the first time in ages at The Hospital. He’d eaten well yesterday evening and again this morning. Perhaps the hospital environment suited him better.

I haven’t visited the new home yet but Lesley says it’s a more ‘clinical’ place. More like a private hospital than a ‘home’. Lesley was going to try calling it The Hospital rather than The Home when she talked to him about it.

So it may be for all the wrong reasons but Lesley’s sister could be right. This other home could suit him better.

Don’t ever tell anyone I said that though.

So Lesley headed off early to The Home this morning, collected all his belongings and took them to the New Home and waited. And waited. It’s no wonder that hospital beds get blocked so often when there isn’t enough transport to take them away after discharge.

While Lesley waited she updated the staff on Dad’s likes and dislikes, his anxieties about coming out of his room, the things that had been learned about getting him to eat and so on.

All through the discussions before deciding whether The New Home would be right they had assured Lesley that they would cut his food up and help him eat so he could finish his meal while it was hot.