🪳 🪳 🪳 Cockroach Café Late Summer 2024

Day 10 of mum being in hospital “for assessment” and the ward appears to be in no hurry to move her on. She’s (too?) comfortable and seems to spend 95% of the day asleep.

Every time I speak to a member of staff they say there will be a best interests meeting but can’t tell me when that will be. I’ve made it clear that I live 100 miles away and work so I need 24 hours notice to be there on a weekday.

i can’t fault the actual care and attention she’s getting, but the communication between staff and patient families is lacking. The same could be said when my late MIL was in hospital in another part of the country. I presume calling patients families just drops off the bottom of the list of things to do when they’re busy.

Luckily she was back home by teatime. But, Jesus.

Oh and apparently they tried to phone me to see if I can empty his commode once a day when he comes out. Not happening.

So as per everyone's experience DF phones me today to say he is being discharged. No communication with family from the hospital.

I currently have a D&V bug and two sick kids at home. DF expecting someone to stay overnight with him. He has suggested that unreliable DB does it, but DB's response when I told him this and that we cannot do it was 'well it is not ideal'. Which means he will leave him when he doesn't want to be there any more.

I have told DB that it is on him and phoned the ward to let them know the reality of the situation. They have said they will let the OT know. So poorly currently that I just have to let the chips fall, if it ends up a failed discharge then DB has to deal with it.

@MovingSwiftlyOn I get that feeling of having retired to do all the the things you couldn't while working, and then ....
It's normal to want your life back.

Guess whose relation is back in A&E today? (Chest pains, a precautionary visit. They've given her breakfast and it sounds like they'll send her back home when all the tests check out. At least I know where she is...).

Regular lurker here and have huge sympathy for everyone on here. We don't have things anywhere near as bad, MIL has all her faculties and is just about managing on her own with 2/3 weekly visits from us, but she is lonely and (understandably) at 94 with heart problems, terrified of dying, not being dead as such, but the journey getting there. Subsequently we're now getting a lot of calls saying she thinks it's the end, and please can we go over, but by the time we get there she quickly perks up. It's anxiety.
I get frustrated with her because sometimes she does so little to help herself, but at the same time feel so sad for her because her life really is so rubbish. Meanwhile we're getting older (DH is nearly 70) and frittering away however many healthy retirement years we may have left, just being on standby.

Thanks, @funnelfan . Off up there on Monday to make a start on all the admin.

Apparently when the ambulance arrived she was deemed fit to stay at home. Possibly this means that the adrenaline rush from the threat of being taken in again gave her enough of a boost that she could get out of her chair? But she sounds happy and the carers are coming four times a day, so, okay then.

Crucially I know where she is now and there's no urgent need for me to go down there. I can wait until I feel more recovered. There was a spell, when she wasn't answering her phone and the hospital said they definitely didn't have her, when I thought I would have to drive down and check, and that was not an attractive prospect. I kept falling asleep this afternoon and that's not what you want for a car trip :/

PS @countrygirl99 I made sure to ask her if the carers had thrown out all the out of date food in the fridge!

I sent a very businesslike email to the GP and social services yesterday saying I'm not satisfied with the assessments carried out last week and detailing what I found on Christmas Day and putting in writing the (main) erroneous things mum had told them Given the GP assessment seemed to be based entirely on 1) the house being clean and 2) mum could remember her date of birth, the fact that behind cupboard/freezer doors it was a very different picture should demolish that. It probably won't get me anywhere but it made me feel I was doing something. Copied in the care company because I reckoned that they were the most likely to come up with practical ideas that they could charge for.

I’m sorry for your family’s loss @NefretForth but it sounds like your MIL is at peace now.

i agree entirely with the chasing. A little example - I rang mums pharmacy first thing on Monday morning as I know they deliver her blister pack on Tuesdays, and it being Christmas Eve I thought they’d need to know ASAP that she was in hospital. They said thanks, and the hospital pharmacist confirmed a couple of hours later that they’d sent through the official notification. All sorted I thought, until I got a phone call on Christmas Eve saying oops we forgot and delivered some meds to your mums house, can we have them back? And then got a bit off with me when I said I’d drop them off when I was around and they were open, and no, I was not going to drive 100 miles to hang around the house waiting for them to come and pick them up.

in the big scheme of things it’s just a small task, but those small tasks add up to a big mental load very very quickly.

It's enraging, isn't it? A colleague of mine is dealing with her elderly and ill mother's needs at the moment, and she spends half her time chasing people to do the things that they ought to do without telling because it is their actual job. She's exhausted and everything is five times harder than it needs to be.

I've slightly unexpectedly graduated from this thread: my own mother is OK so far, and MIL died yesterday. I really thought she was going to outlive all of us. I can't be sorry she's died - she was blind, deaf, bedbound, suffering from vascular dementia which meant she didn't know us, and desperately unhappy - but I am sad for the woman she used to be, who was never anything but kind, generous and welcoming to me.

Got off the phone this minute with my just-visited relative. She managed to get my elderly to answer her phone, and

• she is still at home
• She knows nothing about going back into hospital
• Her 4pm carers didn't show
• She was a bit confused and seemed to think it was the carers calling her

We are still driving back home. I'm leaving just-visited to put a rocket up the care company's bottom in the first instance as she's excellent at that, and we'll take it from there. I'm not shocked but I am VERY unimpressed. FFS...

It was nice thank you. The only bit of Xmas we've had really - illness plus work being done on the house means no decorations, no cooking, no cards sent. It was good to pull a cracker and see a Xmas tree!

@MysterOfwomanY they don't seem to consider the bigger picture, only what's under their nose! Sorry it hasn't worked out this time but hope you were able to enjoy yourself!

Yes, that makes sense!

I think my update is of paltry significance compared to all of yours!
Driving off, this morning, to a twice-postponed Xmas meetup with some of the few relatives I have left, and the phone goes.

It's the hospital. My elderly is going home, they say.
"oh...right. thanks," I say, because I am currently 2h drive away (and still somewhat unwell). The lady herself then texts me to say she's home. Ok. Great.

...Four Hours Later...

Her care firm ring to say they can't get her up out of her chair for love nor money, so they're sending her back.
"Oh... Right. Thanks," I say again.

I guess the hospital was keen to have the bed, and she was keen to get home, and neither of them wanted to really consider how little physio she's had (because it's Xmas).
But the carers are the ones who clean up if she can't get to the loo or commode on time, and so they CAN'T stick their head in the sand.

Welp. Guess when I get home this evening I'm going to be ringing round and checking she's somewhere safe, and lending her a phone shoulder to cry on, as she - of course - wanted to get home.
Would have been nice if it had worked out. But it didn't.

At least in a few days I should be well enough to go visit. I wouldn't have gone anywhere today even if it hadn't been the last chance to see one of them for months (lives a long way away).

All you lot fantasizing about death or disease coming to save you - I have been living the dream this past ten days. But it'll be back on the treadmill soon...

Sounds like the nurses may have been prompting her to go to the toilet, plus she wouldn't have been cued to put things down an unfamiliar loo. I think the diagnosis 'cognitively incontinent' should be used a lot more.

She has had a hospital stay recently and they say she is continent so the medical definition must be very specific because her situation is in no way practical!

Remove knickers and insist on pad checks/care. Thai should work. She is staying with us this week because I live a fair distance away. She is worse in her own home and because she presents well, the carers are saying she is fine (horror). Sadly, I think this is her last visit to us. We have a 6 year old too and DM's hygiene is so bad, it's just too much for us to manage 🙈

@Newmum738 i removed all of mums normal knickers from the house and left her packs of tena knickers in their place. As her dementia worsened she couldn’t work out how to unfold them from the pack so would go without with resultant little accidents. I got quite strict with the carers and insisted they did pad checks and pad care as necessary at each visit, as they asked mum if she was wearing them and she always said yes even when she wasn’t. That worked well, combined with dry night pads on the bed as mum spends all day in bed. The amount of laundry reduced considerably!

had mum not been admitted to hospital I would have enquired at the GP for an incontinence review/referral. I believe certain medications and or conditions can make it worse (e.g. UTIs) so a medical review of your mum is probably a good start, and they can signpost other services in your area if she’s medically ok.

Can't you just dispense with knickers (disappear them) and pads altogether and insist she uses the incontinence pants at all times instead of underwear @Newmum738 ? It's an awful thing to have to witness and clean up after. And surely the carers need to know she's basically incontinent?

Can you pin a picture of the pads with a big Red Cross through them and stick it above the toilet with NO written above. Sometimes pictures can help especially if short term memory is an issue. Big hugs to you for having to do this. I believe Amazon sell long armed disposable gloves.

@BestIsWest I feel your pain! I've had words with DM today for leaving soaked incontinence pants lying around when I provided a bin. DH also had words with her because he had to clean up after a wee incident in the car yesterday and she had another accident at lunch today and wasn't wearing her special pants!

Advice needed - DM definitely needs support and I don't know if carers are enough. They seem to to she's fine because she can dress herself but she leaves soaking incontinence pads all over the house, wees on the sofa and in her clothes which she then dries and it in again 🙈

She clearly needs help but I'm struggling to know what sort. Does anyone have any experience that might help me?

Love the coffee and ketchup tips thanks @NoBinturongsHereMate and @BestIsWest.

Reading everyone’s experiences has helped me remember how far we’ve come in the last couple of years. We had freezer fun, food poisoning risk, unblocked toilets and endless laundry due to incontinence along the way too. DF is doing so much better physically now he’s in 24 hour care, although there are still some challenges mentally.

Glad to hear @funnelfan managed to have a nice Christmas after such a draining year.

Just had my arm up to the elbow in wee and shit unblocking DMs loo because she’s been putting incontinence pads down it. Again. Have read her the riot act again. She’s wailing and I feel unutterably cruel.