Some slightly good news today...after being in the fracture ward for over a month since my mother fractured her hip on Christmas day, today I was told a place is available at a community hospital for rehab and she should be able to be transferred tomorrow. Today was the also the first time I had been there at the time when the OTs were trying to get her on her feet...four times they managed to get her standing with the frame but she collapsed back in the chair without taking a step. She always seems to be half asleep, you have to constantly grab her attention if you want to interact in any way.
Good news about the hospital transfer, Gracious Rebel. Is the sleepiness due to her medication, or something else? Can the doctors do anything about it?
Hope something is sorted out soon, @Sarasa - this doesn't sound as if anything is getting any better, and respite for everyone would be a good idea.
@Gracious Rebel hope your mother gets a rehab place soon. My grandmother's confusion got worse when her calcium levels were out of kilter - is it worth asking if there's anything else going on? Or is it something like on the ward everyone is given sleeping tablets to sleep and she's not used to them and not waking up properly?
I think its possibly diabetes related...they have recently changed her insulin injections from 4 injections per day which she has been on for years to one long acting dose in the morning. Her blood sugar is often too high now. She is in the rehab place now and when I saw her yesterday she seemed a bit more alert. I am concerned that she will be lonely thought as she is in a single room and is not inclined to read or watch tv so just sits there dozing.
@Gracious Rebel Glad your mum is now in rehab. I hope they can get her moving again. Maybe talk to them about the insulin and see if it needs readjusting. Apart from physio are there any other activities she can join in with?
My Elderly Parent remains in a (totally brilliant) Care Home.....but there is, how shall i say this, less there to connect with at every visit.
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On the plus side EP remains contented and when not so contented, fast asleep.
... she is in a single room and is not inclined to read or watch tv so just sits there dozing.
My dad was like that - he didn't even seem interested in the newspapers, and he'd have previously read the Glasgow Herald from cover to cover (and done the crossword). I was quite shocked the first time we visited him in the home - he didn't even seem interested in the TV.
Alright social services have decided that a firmer hand is needed with Dad. We might be on track to get his mental capabilities assessed. They have got fed up with weekly referrals from professional services e.g GP, physiotherapist.
How are all our aging P? Did you get anywhere with the social services @Jengie Jon , and how is your dad at the moment @NOprophet_NØprofit . How's you mother now @Gracious Rebel ? Hope the Dowager is on good form @The Intrepid Mrs S .
We have an offer on my mum's flat. Rather lower than we wanted, but given that I think we are on a knife edge it is better to take it and try and get mum somewhere with more help than holding out for a better offer that given the current political climate might not materialise and find ourselves in a crisis when she really can't cope any more.
After the meltdown of a few weeks ago mum isn't too bad at the moment. She seems to have very muddled memories of the last twenty to thirty years. She couldn't remember I was married, who exactly my sister in law is, and today she asked me if I was considering having any more children (I'm sixty-five). She is still looking forward to her holiday, which is a good thing, and if she is like she's been recently SiL and I will cope fine.
Social Services have gone quiet. It was Mum's ninetieth birthday. Dad managed to get to visit Mum yesterday by taxi for lunch and back despite being confused until the time. I booked the taxi for him. Dad is slowly but surely disengaging from the world. At the moment I think Mum is keeping him attached to some extent but what will happen when she stops swallowing we do not know.
OK an update as requested...My mother has been in the community hospital for rehab for 3 weeks now, and last week the therapy team admitted that she wasn't really making any progress mobility wise, so there was not much point in keeping her there. They discussed options with us - basically she could either go home, to be visited by carers 4 times daily ( to move her, wash her, change incontinence pads etc) or else go straight into a care/nursing home. Its not ideal coming home when in such a state of dependence (we were really hoping that the rehab would get her on her feet again at least a little bit) but it does seem to be worth trying, and as it gives Mum such a boost its almost certainly the best option for now. But I am very conscious that its going to be tough, especially for Dad as it will almost render him housebound as well (he would only be able to get out eg to church, when someone else goes in to sit with her) as he will no longer be able to get her into the car. So realistically I think we will be thinking in terms of residential care fairly soon, and have encouraged Dad to look at some Care homes this week while he is able to get out before they discharge her ... I have offered to go with him. He was having the house inspection by the OT this morning to assess its suitability, what equipment will be required etc. Mum has been much happier the last few times I saw her, as she understands that she will be going home soon.
@Gracious Rebel - having seen my dad go through something similar (he looked after Mum at home for about seven or eight years as her dementia progressed before she went into hospital, then visited her every day for 10 years), you and your family have my sympathy. I hope you can find a solution that works for both your mum and your dad.
I think you're wise to take the offer on your mum's flat, @Sarasa - as you say, you really don't know what's going to happen in the next few months. I've given up on any hope of Dad's house being sold before the Brexit shambles, and just have to accept that even if it fetches what the estate agent thinks it's worth (which we think is about right), the £/$ exchange rate is just going to get worse.
As it is, we lost out because my pension funds and the money from the rest of Dad's estate both came through on days when the £ was low against the $.
Thank you for asking, @Sarasa -the Dowager seems well enough, though telephone conversations are getting harder to interpret. She had an annual review at the home last time I went down to visit, and her complaint was that she'd been left 'sitting on the potty' a long time that morning until a cleaner 'happened by to sort her out'. Of course it wasn't a cleaner, and her idea of 'a long time' may be only a few minutes - but if she's asked how things are, she feels compelled to find a reason to complain!
ION, I had a letter out of the blue, from a local couple who don't know Mum, but know of her and know some of her neighbours, expressing an interest in the house when it is sold. We showed them round, and they remain seriously interested, at the sort of prices the last estate agent quoted us. We can't decide if they want to develop both (possible) houses and sell them on, or if they want to leave their house - by the main road without much garden - and live in Mum's (though they were not very interested in the house itself). Time will tell...
I haven't seen my parents for three weeks as I've had a persistent cough for the last fortnight and can't risk smiting Dad. I'm ashamed to say it's been a bit of a blessing.
I think my parents are depressed. Dad is still marooned in his armchair. He gets told once a month by his doctor that he needs to be more active, and several times a day by Mum that he mustn't overdo things, that it's not worth risking anything, and if he does go to do anything, Mum tries to scurry to get there ahead of him and do it for him. She also keeps saying things like "Are you sure you're well enough? You're looking pale" which would grind anyone down.
I'm struggling to find topics of conversation that don't make him sad. E.g.
Me: "The new Aberdeen bypass has opened! I've driven round it."
Dad, with a sad sigh, "I'll never drive there again"
On my last visit I was rejoicing over a new research contract and my parents both shook their heads sadly and said they were sorry I was still having to look for work "when I ought to be winding down towards retirement" I'm 54!! I only got my PhD five years ago! I told them I intended to carry on researching until I dropped because I love it, and they said they were sorry my life had turned out that way. (where is the head-banging emoji when you need it?)
Meanwhile Mum is terrified of losing Dad. At the stroke of midnight at Hogmonay she burst into tears and said she dreaded what 2019 might bring. Last month Dad weighed himself as he does once a fortnight and told Mum he'd lost 10lbs. Mum burst into tears, thinking that sudden weight loss must mean terminal cancer and that he was going to die. In fact he'd misread the scales and hadn't lost any weight at all, but Mum was inconsolable for a couple of hours until it occurred to them to re-weigh Dad.
It's such a shame. They are both relatively healthy, both still driving. They live in a house which is immaculately tidy, clean, and comfortable and Mum is a splendid cook; they eat very well. But they are both acutely aware that one tiny thing - a slip on ice, a fall - and life as they know it could finish. Maybe next week. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in the next 10 mins. Mum is just on a knife-edge of anxiety.
@Gracious Rebel - It sounds like what your mum wants and what she needs might be two different things. I can see why she wants to go home, but it sounds like it might not be feasible. Is there a chance of respite somewhere. Someone else might be able to get her a little more mobile, or she might decide she likes being in a home. Good luck with it all. @Jengie Jon . That sounds a worry. Would your dad be able to move to the same place your mum is, or is that not possible? @The Intrepid Mrs S - My mother has very little sense of time too now. I thought she'd forgotten the ability to tell the time, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Instead she seems to have lost the ability to make sense of what time means. My son is severely dyslexic and he once told me that 'time is a concept that has no meaning for me', my mum seems to be following suit. Hope the planning goes through smoothly and you get a buyer (maybe the people you showed round) quickly. @North East Quine - that sounds tough. Your mum is obviously is finding the idea that things might slip out of her control tough to deal with. Not good for your dad who would probably be happier and fitter if he was doing more.
@North East Quine - that reminds me so much of a 'friend' who was operated on for prostate cancer. It really brought him down, but when he was given the all-clear after a year or so we all thought he might cheer up a bit. Instead, he would do the 'shake his head sadly' bit and say 'ah yes, but you never know what's around the next corner, do you?'
Well, no - but then none of us do! Linus Van Pelt had it right when he said 'worrying doesn't stop the bad stuff happening. It just stops you enjoying the good stuff', but people in that mindset can't or won't see it.
I'm sorry they seem locked in this co-dependency, though
The Dowager has yet another chest infection and is on stronger antibiotics. Strangely the symptom is confusion, but the cause is a chest infection not a UTI (they think). I didn't know that could happen!
@Sarasa -she's always been a very impatient person, as with so many things it has just got worse with age!
Well the people who'd put in the low offer on my mother's flat have now withdrawn it. I think they just hadn't really got the funds, and I certainly don't want to drop the price anymore at the moment. It's probably a blessing in one way as we haven't anywhere lined up for her to move to, though I do worry that it won't take much for her to do something that means decisions about moving are taken out of her hands.
Sorry to hear that, Sarasa - been there, done that! There are few things in life more stressful than trying to sell your house (or someone else's) - and it's so disappointing when you think you've got a buyer and then you haven't.
My sympathies too after selling apartment last year. When a sale came, everything was fairly low key until agent rang to say full deposit had been paid. Not a total assurance of course, but a purchaser would be foolish to risk losing a full deposit if sale did not go through . I was a bundle of nerves till the cooling off period came to an end.
In England and Wales you don't have to hand over any money to the seller until the sale is completed, although once you have exchanged signed contracts agreeing to the sale it must go through (or you have to pay penalties, presumably). Most lawyers try to do the rest of it as soon as possible after exchange of contracts; the buyer can't take possession of the house until completion day, when the money is actually transferred. This is why moving house in England and Wales is such a stressful process; either party can withdraw (almost) up to the last minute, and if more than one transaction is involved (A buys B's house, which gives B the money to buy C's house, which enables C to buy D's house...) and any part of the chain goes wrong... Scotland has a different system (sealed bids, and if your bid is accepted you're committed, but I don't know much else about it).
We actually found selling Mother-in-law's house fairly stress-free: there was a lot of delay, but M-i-l had enough savings to go into the care home without waiting for the house to be sold. So all we had to do when we got a phone call to say there was something else holding up the sale, was say 'yes, another fortnight/month/whatever is not going to inconvenience us.' Which wasn't quite true (we were paying someone to check that the house was OK and nobody had broken in, and someone else to mow the lawn occasionally) but less of a pain in the neck than any other house sale we have ever been involved in.
Hope you manage to find another buyer soon, Sarasa.
Thanks @Jane R . We have another viewing tomorrow so I have to get up early and get over to mum's to get her out of the way by 9.45. We're not telling her about the viewings as she doesn't trust anyone in the flat while she's not there. I've told mum we're going out to breakfast as I want to try a new café in the high street!
I think we may have to move mum into care and use up her savings while trying to sell the flat as things can't go on as they are for much longer. Yesterday the surgery phoned up. Mum had been in there being verbally aggressive as she thought she didn't have the right medication. When she told me about it in the evening she couldn't remember she'd been given a short term prescription. Her medicines are not critical (she's doing amazingly well on that front for someone who is 91 next weekend) so I'm not too worried, just concerned that she is getting so confused and forgetful. We have someone coming round the week after next to see if they can sort out a solution so she can carry on taking the medication independently.
Thank you for all the prayers and hugs. Yesterday was a good day. I got to mum's early enough to get her out for breakfast while there was a viewing of her flat. Banana pancakes and coffee are not what I usually have, but they were very nice. I then took mum home and managed to help her declutter one and a half wardrobes of clothes. It is very obvious that mum has lost a lot of weight. A lot of the things she wanted to keep look like they'd drown her. I think a shopping trip might be in order. Her weight loss isn't alarming, but it does show that she is probably not eating as well as she should. To cap it all she phoned in the evening to thank me for a nice day (hasn't done that for several years) and the people who viewed the flat liked it and want to do a second viewing.
Dad has ended up in hospital again. This time we suspect just muscle soreness due to walking around more than usual plus dehydration and not eating properly. My sister bosses my Dad around because she is trying to control events. She is imagining the worse (I wonder who she got that off, hint ). My dad rebels against this with non-cooperation, I do the same. It is safer to step back and encourage as my father eventually learnt with me. Maybe I need to talk to Dad but it is not going to be easy.
Oh well, I just need to deliver clothes to Dad today, spend a short while with him and then go home.
I ended up in one of those awkward talks with a consultant that you have with an ageing frail parent (let the reader understand). We are going to have to activate our power of attorney shortly, unfortunately, it is only financial, not health.
That happened to the Dowager at one point. Then she decided that she didn't need them any more and told them so. Next day she was ringing them up to ask why they hadn't been...
(not that I'm suggesting that your mother would do anything so daft!)
@Gracious Rebel hope your mother is continuing to improve now she's back home with care in place. So good that she is out of hospital.
After my mother's meltdown in the doctor's surgery the other week the practice contacted both the medicine support and mental health teams. The medicine support team are coming out next week and the psychiatrist visited mum on Tuesday. Nether my brother or I could get there, but the doctor phoned my brother on speaker phone and said he's going to try mum on a low dose of risperidone, and my brother is keen that she does so. I'm hoping the medical support team will have strategies about how she can take that safely, living on her own without support specially as the doctor thinks she is hiding or missing the minimal amount of medicine she does take. Brother is taking her to the GP to discuss it all next Tuesday and I'm going over for the medicine support visit on Wednesday. I'm not telling mum about it as she'll refuse to see them if I do. After the psychiatrist's visit she phoned me up in a rage blaming the neighbours. I think she thinks they called in the psychiatrist because they want to make mum look mad.
I went to see the Dowager today as a sort of counterbalance to seeing Master S yesterday. She is still coughing but looks so much more herself (she's had her hair cut, so she doesn't use that stupid hair grip, thank heavens). She says she doesn't feel herself yet, but I don't think she ever will - unlike Sarasa's Mum, at least sometimes she knows her mind is letting her down.
There were two funny moments - as it is almost St. David's Day I took her daffodils, and that reminded me of the Intrepid Grandson's comment on dragons. He was informed that they breathed fire down their nostrils, and after a moment's consideration, said 'so they don't have snot, then?'
The second came when I was about to tell her that Miss S was having another baby. I said 'I have some exciting news for you' and she looked at me and said 'you're pregnant? '
I am 67 (I thought of you again, @Sarasa !) and said 'Well that would indeed be a miracle, Mum - no, it's Miss S who is expecting'. She was duly delighted, though
Have been doing the home reviewing for Dad over the last couple of months, not rushing it as he is highly resistant but with last weeks trip to the hospital (he is still in) this became urgent. So I rang around the three recommended by a friend of my father's last Monday and one had spaces. Today my sister and I went to see it. Both it and the room feel ideal for Dad. Let's hope that he agrees at least to try it on a respite basis.
@NOprophet_NØprofit I am in awe of the fact that you still - as demonstrated on this thread - care for him at all. I am not at all sure that I would, in your position.
I was in a hospital waiting room for a long time today, with an elderly lady (10 years younger than the Dowager) and tried my best to inculcate into her the idea that she should a) accept and b) pay for, help (her daughter seems to spend her life running round after her, which I can't think is good).
Who knows?
Mrs. S, resolved to do better by her own daughter!
Dunno, how can one not feel responsible and want to do the right things? Even if my parents effed it up starting about 30 years ago - they basically left and had little to do with any of their children after their first grandchild was born (our's) and my father retired.
He was refugee twice, first from Germany in 1938 and then out of Singapore in 1942. Almost all of his relatives died in the war. I've thought the shadows of this haunt him still with inability to emote, loose connections with us.
I am staying with my dad for a few days, to keep an eye on him after his angiogram procedure. He seems to be recovering fine, but I am worrying about his memory. He has mentioned on the phone a few times that his memory isn't as good as it used to be, but has always emphasised that it's just a normal part of getting older, nothing to worry about. But I am realising I am not sure what 'normal' is in this context.
The examples he gave seemed normal, like forgetting details of conversations, but then I had a phone conversation with him a while back that didn't seem so normal. It was about a tie I apparently knitted him when I was seven. I don't even remember this - I just remember having knitting lessons at school, hating them, and knitting a dishcloth that was full of holes. But apparently I also knitted my dad a tie, and whenever we've had conversations about gifts, he has always mentioned this, as an example of why homemade gifts are the best, and how special this tie was because I knitted it, and how he wore it to work and proudly told everyone his daughter made it. He has brought it up so many times, and clearly it meant a lot to him. But when I mentioned this tie in a phone conversation recently with my dad, he had no idea what I was talking about, which seems a different sort of memory loss than forgetting details of conversations. I asked him again today, in case he remembered again, but he still had no idea.
Today, he has twice had memory blips that seemed odd to me. We were going out, and I said we needed to check the back door was locked, and that we needed to take the key out of the door (as he has always insisted this is vitally important for safety when he has visited me). He said it wasn't important, but I took it out, and he said 'Leave it on the table,' which is the exact thing he has always told me never to do when he has visited me - he always has said it needs to be out of sight of anyone looking in the window. So I reminded him of this, and told him I was putting the keys out of sight in the box of oranges, and I showed him and he laughed. But a couple of hours later when we came back, and were sitting by the table, he said he'd found some keys and they must be mine. I said no they're not, and he said it was very odd that he'd found these keys in the box of oranges - he was genuinely surprised and confused, and then I reminded him of our previous conversation, and he said he remembered the conversation now I mentioned it, but he didn't know I'd put the keys in the box.
And another thing, when we were out, at the coffee shop, he took his new medication, and later, when we were home, I asked where his medication was, so I could google it, and he said it must be on the table, adding 'Because I took it when we got home, remember?' I said no, you took it at the coffee shop, and then he said oh yes. He remembered when I reminded him. But I don't understand how you can have a memory of taking a medication in a different place from where you took it. It is all visual in my mind, very clear, my putting the keys in the oranges box, and him taking his medication in the coffee shop, and I don't understand what is happening in his mind to stop it being clear, and whether this is just normal as people get older. He didn't used to be like this, and I don't remember his parents having this kind of memory blip either, but maybe they did and I never noticed. I also know I have an unusually vivid memory for details myself, so I know I also can't use my own memory as a norm standard to compare with.
fineline please give it a few days, he may have had drugs to help him forget the surgical procedure. Unfortunately, these drugs are pretty unselective in what they make you forget and their effect can take a while to wear off..
The conversation about the knitted tie was from a few months ago. And he didn't have drowsy drugs yesterday, I don't think - just local anaesthetic in his arm.
Memory can also fluctuate with tiredness and hydration.
I remember visiting my FiL in his holiday let. He was still ok enough at that time to get himself from Wales to the Lake District and act as our host. But by the end of the evening he had lost track of where he was, and assumed he was visiting our house.
Similarly when my mother was in her last months in hospital, my brother would spend visits encouraging her to sip water, which markedly improved her grasp of reality.
Yes, my dad has said today that he wasn't very able to focus yesterday because of his pain. He was drinking enough, because I was making him lots of cups of tea, but he was also refusing to take any form of pain killer. Today I pursuaded him to take one. I still find the forgetting of the tie thing odd, as that is a longterm memory that seems to have vanished from his mind, but maybe that is a one-off.
Once memory starts to unspool, it goes in all sorts of directions.
In one of her more disconnected days my mother kept reiterating an event that did not exist - that of seeing a neighbour in his car on his way to kill himself. The man in question died of natural causes.
And my grandmother in due course forgot who my mother (her daughter) was: she was just the woman of the house.
Comments
Another UTI...
In any case, as Piglet says, good luck - you need the respite quite as much as she does!
Mrs. S, awaiting the results of the latest doctor's visit![/quote]
Indeed, the word "respite" is there to mean respite for the carers.
@Gracious Rebel hope your mother gets a rehab place soon. My grandmother's confusion got worse when her calcium levels were out of kilter - is it worth asking if there's anything else going on? Or is it something like on the ward everyone is given sleeping tablets to sleep and she's not used to them and not waking up properly?
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On the plus side EP remains contented and when not so contented, fast asleep.
We have an offer on my mum's flat. Rather lower than we wanted, but given that I think we are on a knife edge it is better to take it and try and get mum somewhere with more help than holding out for a better offer that given the current political climate might not materialise and find ourselves in a crisis when she really can't cope any more.
After the meltdown of a few weeks ago mum isn't too bad at the moment. She seems to have very muddled memories of the last twenty to thirty years. She couldn't remember I was married, who exactly my sister in law is, and today she asked me if I was considering having any more children (I'm sixty-five). She is still looking forward to her holiday, which is a good thing, and if she is like she's been recently SiL and I will cope fine.
@Gracious Rebel - having seen my dad go through something similar (he looked after Mum at home for about seven or eight years as her dementia progressed before she went into hospital, then visited her every day for 10 years), you and your family have my sympathy. I hope you can find a solution that works for both your mum and your dad.
I think you're wise to take the offer on your mum's flat, @Sarasa - as you say, you really don't know what's going to happen in the next few months. I've given up on any hope of Dad's house being sold before the Brexit shambles, and just have to accept that even if it fetches what the estate agent thinks it's worth (which we think is about right), the £/$ exchange rate is just going to get worse.
As it is, we lost out because my pension funds and the money from the rest of Dad's estate both came through on days when the £ was low against the $.
Bloody Brexit.
ION, I had a letter out of the blue, from a local couple who don't know Mum, but know of her and know some of her neighbours, expressing an interest in the house when it is sold. We showed them round, and they remain seriously interested, at the sort of prices the last estate agent quoted us. We can't decide if they want to develop both (possible) houses and sell them on, or if they want to leave their house - by the main road without much garden - and live in Mum's (though they were not very interested in the house itself). Time will tell...
Mrs. S, awaiting the drawings to go to Planning!
I think my parents are depressed. Dad is still marooned in his armchair. He gets told once a month by his doctor that he needs to be more active, and several times a day by Mum that he mustn't overdo things, that it's not worth risking anything, and if he does go to do anything, Mum tries to scurry to get there ahead of him and do it for him. She also keeps saying things like "Are you sure you're well enough? You're looking pale" which would grind anyone down.
I'm struggling to find topics of conversation that don't make him sad. E.g.
Me: "The new Aberdeen bypass has opened! I've driven round it."
Dad, with a sad sigh, "I'll never drive there again"
On my last visit I was rejoicing over a new research contract and my parents both shook their heads sadly and said they were sorry I was still having to look for work "when I ought to be winding down towards retirement" I'm 54!! I only got my PhD five years ago! I told them I intended to carry on researching until I dropped because I love it, and they said they were sorry my life had turned out that way. (where is the head-banging emoji when you need it?)
Meanwhile Mum is terrified of losing Dad. At the stroke of midnight at Hogmonay she burst into tears and said she dreaded what 2019 might bring. Last month Dad weighed himself as he does once a fortnight and told Mum he'd lost 10lbs. Mum burst into tears, thinking that sudden weight loss must mean terminal cancer and that he was going to die. In fact he'd misread the scales and hadn't lost any weight at all, but Mum was inconsolable for a couple of hours until it occurred to them to re-weigh Dad.
It's such a shame. They are both relatively healthy, both still driving. They live in a house which is immaculately tidy, clean, and comfortable and Mum is a splendid cook; they eat very well. But they are both acutely aware that one tiny thing - a slip on ice, a fall - and life as they know it could finish. Maybe next week. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in the next 10 mins. Mum is just on a knife-edge of anxiety.
@Jengie Jon . That sounds a worry. Would your dad be able to move to the same place your mum is, or is that not possible?
@The Intrepid Mrs S - My mother has very little sense of time too now. I thought she'd forgotten the ability to tell the time, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Instead she seems to have lost the ability to make sense of what time means. My son is severely dyslexic and he once told me that 'time is a concept that has no meaning for me', my mum seems to be following suit. Hope the planning goes through smoothly and you get a buyer (maybe the people you showed round) quickly.
@North East Quine - that sounds tough. Your mum is obviously is finding the idea that things might slip out of her control tough to deal with. Not good for your dad who would probably be happier and fitter if he was doing more.
Well, no - but then none of us do! Linus Van Pelt had it right when he said 'worrying doesn't stop the bad stuff happening. It just stops you enjoying the good stuff', but people in that mindset can't or won't see it.
I'm sorry they seem locked in this co-dependency, though
The Dowager has yet another chest infection and is on stronger antibiotics. Strangely the symptom is confusion, but the cause is a chest infection not a UTI (they think). I didn't know that could happen!
@Sarasa -she's always been a very impatient person, as with so many things it has just got worse with age!
We actually found selling Mother-in-law's house fairly stress-free: there was a lot of delay, but M-i-l had enough savings to go into the care home without waiting for the house to be sold. So all we had to do when we got a phone call to say there was something else holding up the sale, was say 'yes, another fortnight/month/whatever is not going to inconvenience us.' Which wasn't quite true (we were paying someone to check that the house was OK and nobody had broken in, and someone else to mow the lawn occasionally) but less of a pain in the neck than any other house sale we have ever been involved in.
Hope you manage to find another buyer soon, Sarasa.
I think we may have to move mum into care and use up her savings while trying to sell the flat as things can't go on as they are for much longer. Yesterday the surgery phoned up. Mum had been in there being verbally aggressive as she thought she didn't have the right medication. When she told me about it in the evening she couldn't remember she'd been given a short term prescription. Her medicines are not critical (she's doing amazingly well on that front for someone who is 91 next weekend) so I'm not too worried, just concerned that she is getting so confused and forgetful. We have someone coming round the week after next to see if they can sort out a solution so she can carry on taking the medication independently.
I am in awe of your patience and kindness; your mother is very fortunate to have you as her daughter.
Oh well, I just need to deliver clothes to Dad today, spend a short while with him and then go home.
That happened to the Dowager at one point. Then she decided that she didn't need them any more and told them so. Next day she was ringing them up to ask why they hadn't been...
(not that I'm suggesting that your mother would do anything so daft!)
Mrs. S, still shuddering
After my mother's meltdown in the doctor's surgery the other week the practice contacted both the medicine support and mental health teams. The medicine support team are coming out next week and the psychiatrist visited mum on Tuesday. Nether my brother or I could get there, but the doctor phoned my brother on speaker phone and said he's going to try mum on a low dose of risperidone, and my brother is keen that she does so. I'm hoping the medical support team will have strategies about how she can take that safely, living on her own without support specially as the doctor thinks she is hiding or missing the minimal amount of medicine she does take. Brother is taking her to the GP to discuss it all next Tuesday and I'm going over for the medicine support visit on Wednesday. I'm not telling mum about it as she'll refuse to see them if I do. After the psychiatrist's visit she phoned me up in a rage blaming the neighbours. I think she thinks they called in the psychiatrist because they want to make mum look mad.
I went to see the Dowager today as a sort of counterbalance to seeing Master S yesterday. She is still coughing but looks so much more herself (she's had her hair cut, so she doesn't use that stupid hair grip, thank heavens). She says she doesn't feel herself yet, but I don't think she ever will - unlike Sarasa's Mum, at least sometimes she knows her mind is letting her down.
There were two funny moments - as it is almost St. David's Day I took her daffodils, and that reminded me of the Intrepid Grandson's comment on dragons. He was informed that they breathed fire down their nostrils, and after a moment's consideration, said 'so they don't have snot, then?'
The second came when I was about to tell her that Miss S was having another baby. I said 'I have some exciting news for you' and she looked at me and said 'you're pregnant? '
I am 67 (I thought of you again, @Sarasa !) and said 'Well that would indeed be a miracle, Mum - no, it's Miss S who is expecting'. She was duly delighted, though
Mrs. S, definitely not pregnant
Dunno, how can one not feel responsible and want to do the right things? Even if my parents effed it up starting about 30 years ago - they basically left and had little to do with any of their children after their first grandchild was born (our's) and my father retired.
He was refugee twice, first from Germany in 1938 and then out of Singapore in 1942. Almost all of his relatives died in the war. I've thought the shadows of this haunt him still with inability to emote, loose connections with us.
The examples he gave seemed normal, like forgetting details of conversations, but then I had a phone conversation with him a while back that didn't seem so normal. It was about a tie I apparently knitted him when I was seven. I don't even remember this - I just remember having knitting lessons at school, hating them, and knitting a dishcloth that was full of holes. But apparently I also knitted my dad a tie, and whenever we've had conversations about gifts, he has always mentioned this, as an example of why homemade gifts are the best, and how special this tie was because I knitted it, and how he wore it to work and proudly told everyone his daughter made it. He has brought it up so many times, and clearly it meant a lot to him. But when I mentioned this tie in a phone conversation recently with my dad, he had no idea what I was talking about, which seems a different sort of memory loss than forgetting details of conversations. I asked him again today, in case he remembered again, but he still had no idea.
Today, he has twice had memory blips that seemed odd to me. We were going out, and I said we needed to check the back door was locked, and that we needed to take the key out of the door (as he has always insisted this is vitally important for safety when he has visited me). He said it wasn't important, but I took it out, and he said 'Leave it on the table,' which is the exact thing he has always told me never to do when he has visited me - he always has said it needs to be out of sight of anyone looking in the window. So I reminded him of this, and told him I was putting the keys out of sight in the box of oranges, and I showed him and he laughed. But a couple of hours later when we came back, and were sitting by the table, he said he'd found some keys and they must be mine. I said no they're not, and he said it was very odd that he'd found these keys in the box of oranges - he was genuinely surprised and confused, and then I reminded him of our previous conversation, and he said he remembered the conversation now I mentioned it, but he didn't know I'd put the keys in the box.
And another thing, when we were out, at the coffee shop, he took his new medication, and later, when we were home, I asked where his medication was, so I could google it, and he said it must be on the table, adding 'Because I took it when we got home, remember?' I said no, you took it at the coffee shop, and then he said oh yes. He remembered when I reminded him. But I don't understand how you can have a memory of taking a medication in a different place from where you took it. It is all visual in my mind, very clear, my putting the keys in the oranges box, and him taking his medication in the coffee shop, and I don't understand what is happening in his mind to stop it being clear, and whether this is just normal as people get older. He didn't used to be like this, and I don't remember his parents having this kind of memory blip either, but maybe they did and I never noticed. I also know I have an unusually vivid memory for details myself, so I know I also can't use my own memory as a norm standard to compare with.
I remember visiting my FiL in his holiday let. He was still ok enough at that time to get himself from Wales to the Lake District and act as our host. But by the end of the evening he had lost track of where he was, and assumed he was visiting our house.
Similarly when my mother was in her last months in hospital, my brother would spend visits encouraging her to sip water, which markedly improved her grasp of reality.
In one of her more disconnected days my mother kept reiterating an event that did not exist - that of seeing a neighbour in his car on his way to kill himself. The man in question died of natural causes.
And my grandmother in due course forgot who my mother (her daughter) was: she was just the woman of the house.