Cockroach Cafe - newly refurbished for the summer

Sorry you’ve had a day with the vortex of doom marmite it is so hard to maintain boundaries and not become dragged down. I find I can distract dm if out, much harder at home.

My Counsellor is away for the summer. I really miss my sessions with her - she's so good at making me think about situations, my boundaries & looking after my mental & physical health viz a viz my mother. I'm trying not to slip backwards.

"She moaned about everything the whole time" It's so exhausting to be with someone like that, don't you think @notaflyingmonkey? I spent 7 hours with my mother yesterday and it was a constant stream of moaning. She never has anything good to say about anybody & if she hears about something good that's happened to someone she gives a deep sign and adds something a long the lines of other people living charmed lives/having the good fortune she's never had etc. I've never come across such a discontented person. I once suggested she count her blessings but she replied she hasn't got any 🙄

Thanks for asking mum5 waiting test results etc but treatment likely…. Doing ok thanks to wonderful support so far. Thank you.
nota that must be so frustrating and stressful. Sounds like a trip out with a stroppy toddler who strangers consider angelic……
Have you heard anything re your health?
We can understand them feeling stressed etc by hosp trips but my goodness they can make it soooooo much harder…..
Took dm to m and s for the first time in 2 years on the hunt for the jumper equivalent of unicorn tears………
But the scones were v good( coffee to strong after she’d drunk most of it)
cockroach all

I took DM for a hospital appointment today, having wangled a long/early lunch break. She refused to use the hospital wheelchair, so we got there late as she decided that was the time for her to practise walking again (won't go out with the carer to the end of the road and back). She moaned about everything the whole time - her neighbours, their cars, my weight (one of her favourites) - are you happy being so overweight Nota?

Dr told me how delightful and remarkable she was.

Fuck me.

How are you doing thesandwich?

Just giving the thread a bump to make sure we don’t all vanish….. hope no news is goodish…….

Knotaknitter I'm with you on that - still struggling with the feeling that Dad was pretty badly let down by the NHS over the months before the crisis that put him in his care home. And indeed during his hospital stay when having three simultaneous health conditions meant that two of them were basically forgotten about.

I have huge admiration for individual NHS workers who have gone through hell over the last couple of years and keep turning up to work and doing it all over again. But I can't buy into the whole "glorious NHS" stuff - it's broken and people are falling through the cracks.

@artdecolover I can understand the annoyance.

Covid is, of course, the reason for cancelling visits.

How frustrating @countrygirl99
Any reason given?

I'm feeling quite annoyed today. Saw my cousin in the village earlier. She was asking about everyone. Asked about my sister and said how wonderful it was she spent so much time with mum 😯😯😯😯😡😡😡😡
So I put her straight!
She really does think she spends lots of time with her!! It's SO odd! She demonstrably does not.
In fact after dad died I tackled her about it...she drove past mums old house twice a day on the school run and never even popped in for 5 mins...
She once went 3 weeks without even texting her! She literally lives down the road from her.

Sigh. Silly being annoyed, really.

This afternoon I drove to mum's to take her to see dad. Normally it's about an hour to mum's then half hour back towards home to the hospital but there was a cycle event do it took longer than usual. We got to the hospital to find visiting is cancelled until further notice😠. Half way back to.her house mum tells me she has dad's phone she took home to charge so I have it to take to the hospital tomorrow. Sitting having beer in the garden and head z strange noise - dad's phone, mum calling. Tell her I have the phone, remind her I'm taking it to the hospital tomorrow. 2 minutes later phone rings, same conversation. 2 minutes later it rings again, I turned it off. I've phoned the ward and explained so they are going to call mum do she can speak to dad.

I have to stop myself from sobbing every time one of the staff airily drops out "we were a bit concerned so we had the doctor out to look at your mum" or "he was here anyway so..". I haven't forgotten how hard it was to get through on the forever-engaged surgery line, never mind the process to actually try to get someone to look at mum. It will be a long time before I forget that couple of weeks before Christmas, the frustration, the anxiety, being directed to 111 when I managed to talk to the surgery. Add on to that the anger when some politician trotted out that "the NHS is open for business" when it quite clearly wasn't. Right now I'm certain that mum is getting better care in the home than I could provide, if for no other reason than their immediate and effortless access to a GP.

Dad has actually managed to physically see a GP twice this year. Both times he has been trying for ages then a district nurse will call the GP because they are concerned about dad. Only then will a GP see him. Both times he has ended up being admitted.

Mums feels like they don't care
I'm sure some of them do but at our surgery it's all locums now
The gp partners seem to do half a day a week 🤔

AND...
Isn't it odd how prior to covid you had to be on your last legs to get antibiotics but now...they are happy to prescribed multiple courses without even seeing you!???

Mums old neighbour is havjng similar issues and is very ill but the Dr's only saw him today after about 6 weeks of throwing antibiotics at him.

No doubt he will end up in hospital too.

Oh, @countrygirl99 that's awful 😕
I'm just so pissed off
She's had no copd nurse sppt for 2 years
No dietician appt for 2 years
She needed to be seen
Nothing will come of it I'm sure but mum just feels that now she old they don't care
Hard to argue, really

@Artdecolover I feel your pain. Dad's GP told DB he was shocked at dad's deterioration! DB pointed out that dad hadn't been able to get a face to.face appointments for months and if he had the issues would have been obvious. And he might not be back in hospital for the 3rd time in less than 7 weeks.

Hi all,
Nn changer here. I was mrs08.
Sounds very difficult @countrygirl99, I'm sorry.
It's been a bit fraught here...
Mum was admitted to hospital last week for 4 days.
I'm not sure if I'm being unreasonable making a complaint with the Dr's surgery but I've never seen her so ill.
I did an e consult form on the Monday morning as she had the symptoms of a UTI - she gets them occasionally and always make her really ill. She's been hospitalised with them before.
She has several health problems such as a bladder prolapse, copd, pvd, unstable angina etc which mean even "simple" infections can make her very ill.
They phoned back and the Dr gave her 3 x days of Nitrofurantoin.
Didn't even ask for a urine sample.
By 11pm that night she was really systemically ill - I called 111 who sent an ambulance.
She ended up on IV fluids, IV antibiotics, IV pain relief and Supplemental oxygen.
Her sats and bp were low which the Dr would have realised if she'd been seen.
She was in terrible pain and was quite out of it.
She wet herself 😒
It was horrible not being able to visit 😞
She wasn't making much sense for 24 hours til the meds kicked in.
She was sent home with further antibiotics.
She seems to be improving but it was quite scary.
Surely at her age and with all her health issues she should have been examined??(that's what I asked for on the e consult form)
BTW thanks for the suggestion of the red laundry bags for soiled clothes...came in very handy!
It's been a long week this week...ds1 got his a level results (3 x As ☺) and I've been suffering from my hormonal insomnia which is always fun.

hairbrush easy access is very important, especially in an emergency.
DB took mum to the hospital this afternoon. He has to wait outside and mum came out and told him dad had had some sort of emergency - a funny turn but didn't seem bothered so I got a call to try and find out what was happening while he drove her home. It was someone else on the same bay. Still, hopefully it will have made a point we can refer to when we argue about care provision.

country hope everything goes as well as possible.
hairbrush good advice from knot all homes will be full of old people.
Trust your instincts and local info and speak to the staff. They make the difference. And accessibility sounds key.
Good luck.

Hairbrush in that case, one of the two you can walk to is probably the right one.

Thanks @Knotaknitter that's a good point that she might not remember. Most of the homes locally are off the beaten track. We live in a fairly rural county and we don't have transport. I really hope that she will be in one of the two homes I can walk to, or at least on a bus route.