Cockroach cafe - summer

Ah - distance might be a good thing for your sanity at the moment then! There’s no comfort in being proved right sometimes but maybe some peace to be found in letting GB unpick his mess…

It wasn't one of the homes I researched, they were useless apparently. It was one golden balls sprung on us. And now she's further away from me so getting a home close to me to assess her is going to be more difficult. I'll let GB sort it. I'm just pissed off that mum is being mucked around, it's only going to lead to a further deterioration.

@countrygirl99 oh no… I take it they aren’t one of those homes with a care home section and a nursing home section? Bugger… did you see any potential options when looking for a care home originally? Sorry you’re both going through this

Mum's care home have decided they can't meet her needs after less than 3 weeks. They assessed her twice before she moved in and she had a day visit 😞. TBH I'm not surprised as they were whittling about her not settling in after 3 days. What did they expect from someone with Alzheimer's 😡

It’s SiL’s son… mil probably wouldn’t mind even if she wasn’t away with the fairies, as he’s always been the golden grandchild, but it feels so yucky and grabby. Maybe I’m being irrational as whatever happens she won’t be going home again, so it won’t affect her but it just feels so… wrong ?!

Sometimes you just need to scream into a pillow 💐

Who are the relatives who are stripping the house? Can you pop by to collect some more stuff for MIL in and tell them to sod off... Or better still get them to visit MIL in hospital while she's still with you?

Thanks @FiniteSagacity and @MittensTheKittens…
I could weep… DH on his way to see mil in hospital has just had a car crash. He’s ok thank god, car is mobile but damaged and it’s more stress and grief we don’t need. Fucker just pulled out on him! Started having a go then back pedalled when DH suggested getting the police involved. So who knows if they are even insured?! More stress, more admin, more cost… meanwhile other relatives are stripping stuff out of mil’s house and she’s not even dead yet. I really, really don’t like humanity much right now…

I had a paracetamol drip when I had an op. Paracetamol is really effective when it's given by as a drip and the dose adjusted to your weight, rather than the tablets we're used to.
I think you can easily mix it with other painkillers without it causing issues?

@NoMoreFluffsToGive I’m so sorry, maybe we should have a cockroach for the desperately sad emoji? I think it’s pretty merciful thinking she might have been better off not to have woken up 💐

As well as current quality of life, it’s also the dread of what the future holds. Our experience of council carers was also pretty bad and the second time was being discharged from hospital back to 2 carers 4 times a day because SS insisted they must try everything before a care home because ‘capacity’.

We’re here whenever you need to pop into the cafe for a vent even if you only have time for a shot of extra strength special reserve before heading back into crisis management.

Thanks everyone… mil somehow survived a ~5 hour operation on Thursday… later that day had completely forgotten she had had an operation and was extremely cross because apparently she’d been calling for help and a drink ALL MORNING and NOBODY came! That’s because you were in theatre love

She’s on a paracetamol drip now, think they are wary of opiates given the state of her heart - she was on a nerve block pre op. Apparently the next two weeks will be critical. She’s very confused though and I do find myself wondering if overall it might have been a blessing for her, if she just hadn’t woken up. I feel guilty even thinking that but her current quality of life it so poor. Do we have a feeling desperately sad emoji?!

My mum seems a bit better now, but we still need to figure out why she is bouncing along the bottom of acceptable levels which means she has no buffer when something changes.

We went to the follow up appointment, where I filled in some gaps (yes, you have fallen over in the last year... This is the fourth one that you've told me about) we also discussed whether feeling a bit funny before falling over means you feel dizzy (yes, mother that is exactly what they mean).

There is a follow up call with her GP next week who needs to refer to endocrinology.
I need to prep her with some questions on a bit of paper so she doesn't get fobbed off

And I've read her the riot act... She needs to follow up and chase (or I will).

Mothering the mother continues!

@NoMoreFluffsToGive how is your mum getting on?

Oh no @NoMoreFluffsToGive I hope she is not in too much pain. The opioids used for pain relief worsen the risk of delirium and constipation which isn't good, they can use regional nerve blocks for elderly patients to limit opioid usage, I don't know if that would be a possibility, but might be worth discussing with the medical team (see 1.3 below)

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg124/chapter/Recommendations#analgesia

Mum had alzheimers already when she fell and broke her hip. I think it was the three weeks in a small more distant hospital (for non existent "physio and rehab") which sent her dementia over a cliff and she went into a CH from there. She was largely in a large room on her own for 3 weeks. Terrible.

Mum had alzheimers already when she fell and broke her hip. I think it was the three weeks in a small more distant hospital (for non existent "physio and rehab") which sent her dementia over a cliff and she went into a CH from there. She was largely in a large room on her own for 3 weeks. Terrible.

@NoMoreFluffsToGive sending Broken hips are awful for anyone. My DF, who was mentally very sharp right to the end, behaved very strangely when he was in hospital with a broken hip. I'm sure it's the combination of pain, medication, lack of sleep and unfamiliar surroundings. In my experience elderly care wards seem to be particularly noisy and chaotic. I don't blame the staff at all- each time Dad was in they all seemed to be very caring but over stretched. But the set up seems almost designed to cause confusion.

@MittensTheKittens she was due to go down this afternoon but a higher priority emergency bumped her down the list… hopefully tomorrow morning? She’s nil by mouth which she will be hating so I hope it’s soon! Only positive (kind of) is she’s very confused so not always aware of what’s going on, which is a sort of blessing. She’s driven me batty at times over the years but I hate seeing her suffer like this…it’s very distressing for DH & SiL too

@NoMoreFluffsToGive
Oh no... How long is the wait for the op?
I don't think anyone is at their best in hospital, hopefully she'll bounce back a little once she's out?

@NoMoreFluffsToGive sympathy.

Been swimming this evening and while I was getting ready another lady was on the phone clearly having an involved conversation with an elderly parent who'd done something unwise (and apparently against all advice) and she was explaining that no she couldn't drop everything right now and come and sort it out because 1) she was at the pool and iver an hour away and 2) she'd had to get a lift to swimming from a friend as her car is in the garage. I gave her a sympathetic and knowing smile.

Well the probably inevitable has happened; a bad fall and a badly broken hip 😭. Her dementia seems to be rapidly worsening too. She’s currently in hospital pending an operation, as despite the risks they can’t leave it. Irony of ironies we’d just collectively agreed (yes, even she had accepted the inevitable!) that she couldn’t cope on her own/in her own home any more given the absolute shit show that the council recommended (!) carers were. All I can say is if you have to get carers in, put at least a ring doorbell in, if not a granny cam or two and make damned sure the company knows you will know when they turn up 3-4 hours after they are supposed to, spend just 5 minutes and do f-all. Oh, and if you check for reviews and they only appear on google reviews, and the 5* reviews are all from staff… yup, red flag right there!
We trusted those shysters!!

@funnelfan
Thanks for the reassurance.
We went to the hospital for the follow up today and it hasn't really made anything clearer.

But has confirmed that my mum is wobbly and slightly confused 😕

I think I've reached the mothering the mother stage.

my dm is due to be discharged after a week following a night on the floor, uti, chest infection,
bloods a bit of concern
however the package as suggested above thank you for that, is for 3 times a day for 3 weeks.
she now will have 2 zimmers,
how does 3 times a day work? up in the morning, lunch and to bed
what about her evening meal.
i have bought her ready meals for the microwave but can she manage those with a zimmer frame?
or do her carers make a sandwich for later, she doesnt like sandwiches she tells me, she likes toast

Handhold @MittensTheKittens , you've got this. It is scary in the early days of cognitive decline when your loved one does things that are out of character like this. It was a hospital appointment that hit home for me - Mum used to attend 6-weekly appointments eye appointments for her macular degeneration. I arranged with my boss to WFH from her house, drove a hundred miles in rush hour traffic to get there for my first online meeting at 10am, got her washed, dressed and out the door and in the clinic only 5 minutes late for her 11am appointment, only to have them look at us and say - but your appointment is cancelled Mrs Fan, we rang to tell you this morning.

Which they did, mum admitted to receiving a call first thing but didn't understand it. My number was on her notes as primary contact, so I had a mild grumble at the clinic and got them to delete mums home number entirely so they had no choice but to call me not her and then took her home.

I must admit, while the eye care at that clinic was excellent, there was absolutely no cross-over for consideration of common co-morbidities of their mostly elderly patients. There was ONE high backed chair in the waiting room, hardly any room for walkers/wheelchairs and at least one member of staff was impatient with mum's shuffling and inability to answer the question.

Eek. I'm back again.

I feel like I'm on the edge of a big crisis.
My mum fell over last week, she's uninjured.
However, they've picked up something in a blood test which requires further investigation and there were threats of her having to stay in over night for monitoring. She managed to convince them that she could go home and come back later in the week.

But, I've just had a weird moment with her...
Called her to confirm that I'll take her to the appointment at 8am. She repeated this back me and was slightly grumpy about the earliness.
10mins later she called me back to check the time.

There have been a couple of other instances where she hasn't followed a conversation fully.

The blood test result result, can cause confusion and I really hope that they get to the bottom of the issue.

I'm also going to have to step in during the appointment to mention this, when she says she's totally fine.

Eek! Argh! Eek!

My mum has slid down the ramp a bit too, although she is still behind yours @GnomeDePlume. She has been assigned a “special chair” in the lounge. She keeps sliding down a wheelchair and falling forward out of the standard high back armchairs. So she now has a rather nice looking leather recliner armchair where they have her in a half recline position surrounded by pillows. She looked particularly twisted and stiff and didn’t respond to me apart from to smile when I held her hand and talked to her directly.

The staff say on her good days she does say a few words and take notice of what’s going on around her so they feel there is benefit for her being in the lounge a few hours a day.