The Cockroach cafe -new look for spring 2021

I usually suggest to the A&E people that the answer is probably a urine infection when DM falls. They usually ignore me, do all the tests, then tell me it's a urine infection.

Meals on Wheels phoned me today (I was actually at work rather than WFH) to tell me when they got to DM's house she had a step ladder out to fetch something down from the top of a cabinet. Fuck knows what I was supposed to do with that voicemail. So next on the to do list is go and hide her step ladder.

Hairbrush as things develop one's personal definition of "normal" starts to drift from what it used to be and what it would look like to an outsider. Your mum may be right, she may be no worse now than on other occasions in the past year but that doesn't means that those other occasions were in any way acceptable. Being on the floor, unable to get up is itself not normal even without the diarrhoea. As things change over time you find yourself in a situation that you would never have accepted at the outset, it just creeps up on you little by little.

Based on what happens with MIL (the frequent faller) they will monitor her blood pressure, blood sugar, check for infection, stick a heart monitor on and try to work out what it was that caused the fall. She's frequently in for a week after a fall as they look for possible causes to rule out (I could save the NHS a bucket of money by pointing out that she eats properly while in hospital and lives on biscuits at home, the patient they are looking at isn't the same person she will be a week after release)

hairbrush you have been coping so long- can you contact hospital discharge sw? Make clear what you cannot do. Insist she has an ot assessment. Make sure hosp understand living circs.
Useful phrase- unsafe discharge, will need readmitting.

I have phoned the hospital and spoken to her on the phone. She tells me she is fine and I can hear the brittleness in her voice. She doesn't know why she's in hospital - as far as she is concerned she is no worse than she has been at any time in the past year or so.

I don't understand how it works - they took her because the GP said so but they only have my word for that? They don't think she has had a stroke, I can't get hold of a commode and there is no room for two people to take her to the toilet.

I have no idea what will happen.

I'm so sorry that things aren't more straightforward.

At least it sounds like your GP is on the ball and that hopefully this will be the first step to you getting a lot more support.

Keeping my fingers crossed for reassuring news at 5pm, whatever form that takes, and do try and take care of yourself tonight if you can, even if just in small ways.

Hairbrush If the paramedics have flagged up that she's in an unsuitable living situation then I would have thought that it was unlikely that the hospital would discharge her back there. I think you will get a night off caring, if not off worrying.

The ambulance came and they actually had to drag her from the bathroom and lift her to perch on the bed. I washed her as well as I could but ran out of flannels and ended up scrubbing her with jcloths.

The paramedics didn't think she needed to be admitted but put in a report to the GP to say that she could not continue living in the caravan.

After they left I cleaned the bathroom floor and it took my daughter and me a good 45 minute to get her to the toilet and back. The carer came and washed her and scrubbed the bathroom, even though I said that I was going to do it. She was with us way over her allotted time and was amazing. Before she left she and my daughter took mum toilet again and by the time she was back in bed she was asking for the toilet again.

I spoke to the GP and she told me to phone the ambulance again and insist that she was admitted to be assessed by geriatrics. So she has gone off in the ambulance.

I honestly don't know if she will come home. I can not meet her care needs at the moment. She needs two people to get to the toilet and even then it takes 40 minutes.

I have to phone A&E around 5 o'clock. My biggest fear is that they will say that she has to come home tonight.

@IthinkIsawahairbrushbackthere

Hope the ambulance had long since been and gone and you're both OK

I am sorry hairbrush. I hope that the rest of the day improves for you. Hopefully the ambulance service wasn't that busy at 6am and they came pretty quickly.

Thinking of you hairbrush

hairbrush Hope the Ambulance has arrived.🌺

hairbrush that sounds grim. I hope the ambulance gets there soon.

I'm perched on the edge of my mum's bed waiting for the ambulance. She has had horrendous diarrhoea and has fallen in the bathroom. I've changed her nightdress but I can't move her so have called an ambulance. I've scrubbed the bed and the bedroom floor and changed the sheets but I can't wash her or do anything about the bathroom.

She's 84 and has been stuck for nearly an hour.

My "popping" over is 12 miles, 25-30 minutes. DM keeps saying maybe she should move nearer to me but I don't want that..she would have no friends locally and would be totally reliant on me (although she is anyway TBH!)

Today I was working, I work freelance and things are starting to pick up. She has got used to me being around and only working 1 or 2 days a week. She called to ask what I was doing. I told her work "oh you don't usually work on a Tuesday". Explained I would be working 3 x a week and she replied "oh I guess I won't see you much then, I will have to go shopping on my own" (like that is even possible-she can barely walk now). Now I remember her working at my age and seeing her DM twice a week if that.. I explained that I was over yesterday, back tomorrow then she starts back tracking. I've had to stop telling her when I'm playing tennis as all i get is oh you are living my old life now..how I would love to be on a tennis court, woe is me I never go out not even for a breath of fresh air!

She has carers 5 times a day as she doesn't cope well on her own for long, they take her out in the car for a drive on the seafront, I take her out when ever I am over but she forgets all this. So frustrating!

Thank you all. Sometimes you have to formally phrase the question for the answer to pop into your head. Too much pop there, I know.

I now realise that what is bugging me about the word is that it minimises the work involved. If someone asks me to pop over they have decided that it's no trouble for me. In this case someone could have asked the neighbour with the key to open the door, walk in, do the thing, walk out, lock up but we don't want to impose on them so Knitter can just pop across and do it.

I suspect that I am being unreasonable because I'm also on a standard setting of permenantly irritable and I have a certain amount of long standing resentment with those involved. I hereby resolve to drop the word "pop" from my dictionary.

@MintyCedric I understand what you mean. Sometimes in the early months the pain of losing my dad would knock me off my feet.

For me "popping distance" is outside, down the stairs, down the drive and along the decking to her door. But the length of time I spend can be anything from a minute (last night, at 11.00 p.m. because she couldn't find the tablets I had left beside her bed for the morning) to 40 minutes (Sunday afternoon when she could not walk from her bed to the toilet - a distance of four steps - and she suggested I passed her the bathroom bin to pee instead. I refused.)

@Knotaknitter
I would be hugely frustrated by that. I don't think I would cope. I am so bad tempered and irritable with what I have to do now. If I had to drive 20 minutes to do it I would be beside myself.

My mum is about 3 minutes walk away so I can pop over very easily.

I have started to get pretty good at "I'll have a look at it next time I'm round", although since that's five days a week atm she never has long to wait.

She had a bit of a meltdown when I left on Sunday (after a 4 hour plus visit), but I pointed out that I'll be round considerably less once I go back to work and left with her ranting after me!

I was in and out of the house inside five minutes, easy as MIL is not there at the moment as she's back in hospital. Can I pop over and do X? I mean, I can and I did and it was a five minute job with a twenty minute drive at each end. The only thing that made me time it today was that I needed to do other things so I had an eye on the clock. Google says it's 7 miles and 15 minutes but it took 20 today.

I hadn't realised that it took that long and I'm now thinking again about how much time I spend in the car going to do trivial unimportant things that could easily wait a day or so. The batteries have gone in the clock, my watch strap has broken, the printer's stopped working - can you pop over and look at it? I think the answer now will be "can it wait until shopping day?"

I’m 10 miles away, 30 minutes drive, but apparently I drive the car from back to the future, and can turn up before she calls

minty 🌺🌺🌺🌺 be very kind to yourself.
hairbrush I get you... the jealousy and rage at the dying of the light..... but keep doing it. Defend your freedoms. Otherwise your world will shrink further.
knot what do you mean about popping distance? I am about 1/4 mile from dm.
But popping always still takes an hour..

My mum lives about 3 miles away. The time it takes to get there varies depending on time of day, school holidays etc. I don't consider it to be "popping" distance. I also have to "gather" my mental & physical strength before I go as she can be very draining.

I keep telling mum that I want the life that she had when she was my age rather than me being tied to the life that she has now.

What is the group thinking on how far is "popping" distance rather than being a journey? "Can you just pop over and.....?"

Hairbrush You're not free to do what you want though are you, she never lets you off the leash.

She seems to have no memory of the wild trips she and dad would go on.

My mum, on the other hand, if baffled that I would want to go on wild trips ("you get that from your dad") as she's never been the adventurous type.

I can sympathise with the frustration with lack of mental faculties. My mum, who has always been very good with tech, seems to have about half a dozen queries a day about issues with the phone/mobile/PC that she never used to have problems with.

We'll hopefully have all the arrangements tied up by the end of tomorrow at the latest.

I'm just working on the photos for the slide show and listening to some of Dad's favourite jazz music and finally, 16 days in, it's hit me like a ton of bricks...that kind of pain that feels like someone is trying to gouge your heart out with a rusty spoon...