Still Wednesday

The Dog and I set out for our epic walk. Much later than planned and without Lesley who was still at What We Have To Refer To As The Hospital. In order to manage The Dog’s stress at one of her Humans having left before she had got out of bed I let her choose the route.

Through the village and out the other side and then back through the nature reserve along the river. After she was denied a chance to tack on Favourite Walk One The Dog slowed right down. She clearly felt short changed but I’d already done my 10,000 steps for the day.

Lesley was back from her visit to Dad and not meeting his GP and I got a full briefing.

“How was it today?”

“Another shit-show. They haven’t got a bloody clue what’s going on. So after one nurse told me I’d got the wrong day to see the GP, another nurse told me the doctor was ready to see him.”

“And?”

“She was great. She’s got his pain management all sorted. He’s going on patches to get constant slow release and they’ll top that up with paracetamol or whatever as needs be.”

“OK. And how was he?”

“In agony.”

“What!?”

“Yep. They aren’t giving him anything. Not even paracetamol. They keep asking him if he wants any medicine and he says no. He always says no unless you ask him the right way. I’ve told them how to get him to take painkillers but they just ignore me.

“I did get the chance to speak to the senior nurse at last though. But after a while I thought even she was going to ignore me too.”

The afternoon was spent talking to a nurse on Dad’s new palliative care team. I could only hear this end of the conversation but Lesley was formidable. Dad is entitled to fully funded end of life care due to his having a terminal disease. But Lesley has never been able to get a consistent or credible answer from any medical professional about when it should start, how long it lasts or who should make the application. At the moment, the nurses at the Shit-Show and the palliative care team are pointing fingers at each other saying it’s the other one’s responsibility. When pinned down, they both say that Dad’s not eligible because he’s “stable”. How a nurse who’s only seen him once can say he’s stable is beyond us. Even Helen Keller could tell that he’s in free-fall.

The palliative care nurse then capped an awful performance by over-ruling the GP’s directions on pain relief. She said that he couldn’t have what the GP recommended because Dad was “opiate naïve”. He’s only “opiate naïve” because The nurses at The Shit-Show haven’t given him the meds that he’d been on for months.

Lesley is now somewhere between massively disappointed and absolutely furious. She let her sister know, again, how much she regretted moving him from The Home. Her sister, again, ignored her. She’s a classic Covert Narcissistic Psychopath. She’ll never take ownership of the consequences of her actions. That’s a battle Lesley will never win.

It’s all an absolute Shit-Show. 

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.