🪳 🪳 🪳 Cockroach Café Late Summer 2024

@MysterOfwomanY I put my foot down at the announcement of another manly sorting out trip to FIL's house, and instead went off to panic-buy elaborate cake and overpriced party food. Parked right outside M&S even. Unheard of.
There won't be any parties, obviously, but it's warm food you can get onto your plate in a few minutes. A few Doritos and it's almost festive.
Early start tomorrow to visit a rapidly deteriorating FIL. Another lovely day to be on the road. Feels as if we're battling through flooded roads and around fallen trees for hours every weekend. Because we are. If MIL were alive, she'd have a conniption thinking about her DS driving through that.

@funnelfan ah scrubbing blood out of the carpet. Don't know about you but I found that one of the least stressful things, at least you know you're achieving something.

@countrygirl99 "let the crisis happen" was advice from here that's been very useful to me this year. But it's kind of a set of scales with that on one side, and doing the few things you think will be effective, on the other. Ofc that "few" may be 0 in your DM's case :/

Well, you'll all envy me - my elderly relative is safe in hospital and I'm ill in bed and so far at least three Xmas meetups have been cancelled or postponed. Apart from the grimness of being so ill, things are greatly simplified. I would be upset at the cancellations but tbh I feel too crap to care about anything but how many hours it is until I can have more paracetamol.

@ArabellaFishwife these days it seems the supermarkets only shut for Xmas day itself. And last year we were delighted to find about 20-30% of the restaurants in the big town a 20 min drive away were open Xmas Day too. We got ourselves a takeaway!

🫰

I’m back at mums house about to tackle the bloody (literally) bedroom.

Thankfully the hospital doctors agree that she appears too frail to be safe at home with the 4x a day care visits, so she’s being found a bed for the night and being assessed by the frailty team tomorrow. They’re going through their full fall protocol to check for anything underlying causing the increase in wobbliness. I’m fingers crossed this is the “crisis” I’ve been waiting for to force through a move to residential care.

They always manage to perform in front of doctors and social workers when it's a short observation like the GP or A&E. I suppose they only have to make the supreme effort for a few minutes at a time.

They always seem to be able to ‘perform’ in a hospital, the adrenaline I suppose.

I most fear for you as it’s a weekend and this caused so many headaches with getting carer and nursing visits back ‘on’ and the hospital social worker needing to be reminded of that.

We are back home again after the pre-Christmas visit to MIL at her assisted-living place which included her 90th birthday party. The party was well-organised by the staff and was enjoyed by all. Was also an opportunity to see most of the other residents. Some are younger than DH and I (you are eligible for assisted living at 55+) and all the residents seem well looked after. DMIL is now the oldest resident there!
Cannot help making comparisons with my own DM who is struggling to manage in her own home, but refuses any support.

Less inclined to do experiments ............ You hope , he kept it secret from his mother , so perhaps !

thanks @FiniteSagacity . Luckily (!) like many here I am a veteran of hanging around hospitals so grabbed my water bottle and my power bank for phone. I also have a weekend bag permanently semi packed with toiletries and clean underwear etc so that didn’t take much organising.

i will only stay overnight if mum is kept in for ease of hospital visiting - if they deem mum well enough to go home I’m making it clear she will be on her own overnight. I’m not falling in the trap of staying with her to make sure she’s ok then never being able to leave.

Trouble is, I’m sure they’ll say medically she is fine to discharge, so it’s down to how safe she is. It took a hospital admission two years ago almost to the day to get her properly diagnosed and sorted with a care package - the multi disciplinary teams worked well but it all took a long time due to the holidays. However, that was at a different hospital, the ambulance brought her today to the “other” big hospital in the city, which is actually in a different nhs trust, so we’ll just have to see.

Of course, she’s perked up considerably with everything going on, compared to her virtually comatose self at home. Currently trying to persuade her not to take off her hospital id wrist band…

@funnelfan wishing you strength for the A&E time today and hoping you get the opportunity to put your own oxygen mask on - keep hydrated and fed yourself. I also hope they properly assess your mum but I know all the services are stretched this time of year.

For us it was the hospital multi-disciplinary team who could see the reality because they assessed over several days but this didn’t happen during the Christmas crisis, the winter crisis or the Easter crises because services were stretched and no beds meant it was sticking plaster and family.

@funnelfan the takeaway was the perfect pick me up last night. Then I crashed out on the sofa while I was meant to be watching the show jumping.
I've decided that when the social worker calls back on Monday I'm going to say that, bearing in mind previous SS advice and the opinion of mum's GP I'm not going to do anything to facilitate a move to the extracare facility. To be honest I doubt whether much of mum's furniture would survive a move/fit a small flat and I'm not prepared to source new furniture, be there for delivery etc when the GP is of the opinion that a move will accelerate her decline and she likely need to move to a care home in fairly short order. Also we plan to downsize in the spring and I just don't have the bandwidth for both. If either of my brothers decide they will do it that's up to them but so far they haven't disagreed with my assessment that it's probably not a good idea. Possibly fearing they will have to sort it instead of leaving it to me. It's a shame mum didn't want to go a few years ago when it was suggested due to dad's mobility issues, it would have been a good move then. She had friends who had moved there and were encouraging them to move and dad would have gone but mum was very anti until she was left on her own which was always highly likely due to the age gap.

Hope last nights takeaway was good countrygirl.

I’m currently sat with mum in A&E as she had a fall and the breakfast carer found her and called an ambulance. Blood all over the place but she doesn’t appear seriously injured. I am now concerned that she isn’t safe enough overnight.

Am relatively impressed that the ambulance “only” took 2.5 hours for a conscious patient and a&E is calm considering last night was mad Friday. Just the waiting around - mums dozing so I’m doom scrolling.

I need to get in a supply of easy-cook food for the holiday, as FIL has been moved again, even further away this time, we're on notice to make unplanned dashes almost four hours north, and of course the shops will be closed. Fuck knows when I'll get to a food shop, though. DH seems to think the emergency shop we did at the beginning of the week will see us through Christmas, alongside the large supply of cheese and biscuits that forms his contribution to the menu.
Meanwhile, when we're not taking marathon day trips to hospitals , he's distracting himself by taking the car off on various DIY and man-work trips, leaving me without any means of getting supplies in. I suppose my fixation with the food shopping is another form of distraction. But there are still four adults who need feeding, and only one car.
I lie awake at night thinking about everything FIL is going through. DH wakes up early and does the same. We're in no fit state for all of this.

DH HAS come up trumps. It's my turn to cook dinner and I'd planned a new recipe I hadn't tried before. He took one look at me, told me I look too knackered to cook and suggested getting a chinese. So duck pancakes and all my favourites it is.

Gin is fine. I bought elderflower tonic at the shops so I’m set.

@funnelfan shall I open a 2nd gin bottle? Or I have a nice single malt in for Christmas if you prefer.

I get fed up of saying no mum isn't doing activity x every week because it stopped running over a year ago and she hasn't done activity y since she moved to where she lives 19 years ago. So no, that doesn't prove how well she is doing with the current care regime.

Bringing ice to go in the gin. I’m doing my weekly DM visit. The carer put her falls pendant on this morning, at lunchtime she noticed it had disappeared. Mum has only been in bed and wobbled to the loo. Both the carer and I have searched everywhere and stripped the bed and neither of us found it. Next step when I get back from the shops is to call the lifeline company and see if they can tell if it’s still connected to the box. If so it’s somewhere in the bedroom!!

Currently taking a break sitting in the car in Asda car park. It’s the smell - mum keeps talking off full Tena pants and leaving them in random places, so you can imagine.

I had that exact problem with my Aunt @countrygirl99 and because social care don't want to deal with it they just go along until the inevitable crisis happens that proves the point you were making all along.

Having just explained for the second day running that m is telling people what she thinks they want to hear not the reality I think I'll just pour tonic straight into the gin bottle tonight. Supposed to be monitoring my blood pressure but daren't take it at the moment.

I'm now thoroughly into the "let the crisis happen" zone. Fortunately mum's GP is thinking along the same lines. Sadly he social worker I spoke to yesterday ( how come they change so frequently? 3 in 5 weeks) was useless and gullible and swallowed all mum's rubbish whole, didn't even spot the massive red flag in their conversation, I had to point out what she had noticed was a major issue. I also pointed out that someone was meant to call me before any meeting so I could be there as they never get the truth from mum. I had to repeat stuff I have told umpteen social workers over the last 2 years. Mum doesn't need help washing, getting dressed, eating etc but she is failing to follow medical advice - partially she forgets, partially she just doesn't want to. She fails to let anyone know she has hurt herself in a fall or to deal with them correctly herself which has led to infected wounds. She gets obsessions that lead to behaviour that can put her at risk. She either doesn't answer the phone or just puts it down so trying to support her from a distance is impossible and even the GP can't get hold of her when they need tp speak to her.Im currently getting regular calls from.the surgery thst mean a 2 hour round trip to put something on her calendar. Currently needs multiple dressing changes a week, I can't be there. Mum insists she can get herself there which physically she can. She's blacklisted by local community volunteer drivers after not being there every time they call, pretty sure that was deliberate to avoid the falls prevention class. She gets scammed/ enters multiple contracts for the same thing. She has no insight into her hearing loss let alone her dementia and thinks she manages just fine and is fully independent, she doesn't and isn't.
Social worker has suggested to her that she goes to an extra care facility that every other social worker has said wouldn't be suitable due to her dementia and GP agrees we would likely end up moving her again to a care home fairly quickly. After dad died mum was obsessed with moving to this facility having refused previously when dad had mobility problems and vefore her dementia was diagnosed. Needs social services approval and the consensus has always been that her dementia is too far gone. It took 18 months to get her to stop asking, I kept telling her there's a long waiting list until she forgot about it, and now it's been raised again I'll have to start again.

And breathe!

Sending 🍋 to go with your G&T @countrygirl99

The lack of acceptance or even some engagement with reality is exhausting @FiniteSagacity and @Morenicecardigans

DF has agreed to engage with the smoking cessation service in an effort to help his breathing so he doesn't end up in hospital again. Having been trying to convince him my whole adult life to give up smoking and reduce his drinking I don't hold out much hope for when he is finally home. I suspect he will revert to type and continue to neglect his health again whilst refusing all suggestions because they make him feel old.

Cheers @countrygirl99!

One if those days today. Now having a medical G & T

DH is ill at the moment (not surprising) so I took MIL round to the care home to see FIL. It is sooo stressful. MIL spends the whole time asking FIL questions he can't answer. No he doesn't know what he had for lunch because he has dementia that's why he's in a care home.

She wouldn't watch the Christmas film with him because she didn't like it and then insisted he helped her out of her chair which meant he forgot where he was sitting.

Bringing up three kids was easier than this!