Cockroach Cafe - Autumn

@roundaboutthehillsareshining , have you tried contacting the local fire service liaison office? They can pay a visit, offer advice, take away potentially dangerous chip pans etc. Might she listen to a nice fireman?

Only anecdotal but does anyone else have experience of this. Did a 22 hour stint in A and E with ER the other day. Part corridor care and part private booth. Got talking to a couple with their ER in exactly the same wait. We got chatting and I expressed concern for any elderly person without family support in A and E. The guy actually said that when their ER had been in A and E alone they seemed to have been fast tracked and in a private booth all along (frail no dementia so knew exactly what went on). I was surprised but then started to think that there might be something to it, all the accompanied ones were getting basic care like drinks etc from family and ignored for hours by the staff. Presumably the unaccompanied ones were checked on more often and needed to be gone quicker!

Anyone any experience of fire risk and the elderly? ER lives in an extremely high risk house and makes some very poor choices around fire safety. She's already caused a flashup/chip pan type fire, but thank God the main flame hit the one non-flammable part of the kitchen and so it didn't quite ignite. Social Services are telling us that it's fine because they've put in new smoke detectors, but we don't think she would respond if they went off. Nothing anyone has tried will change her high risk behaviour around using the oven and hob and last time we switched them off at the consumer unit, she climbed up to switch them back on. Arrg!!

Is wine ok though? My doctor suggested witness protection last time I went to see him. I’m sorely tempted…

Yes, one big general waste bin has been suggested for Mum but she can't get her head around the idea that she would be 'allowed' to put recycling on the general bin. She became slightly obsessed with getting her bins 'right' when she was living in her house and even now that doesn't spend much time there she tends to have a cupboard full of empty packaging that she has convinced herself can't be put in her bin or she will get 'in trouble'. I usually take it home with me to recycle- she doesn't seem worried about me being told off! Until the very end of his life Dad had been the person who put bins out for all the neighbours. Before I arranged the assisted collection Mum was adamant that I should ask one of them to return the favour, which of course was not an option since they are all even older or more infirm than her.
Unfortunately Mum's dementia means that she doesn't seem to realise that her peers are also in their 80s and not that fit. She finds it very frustrating that she doesn't have a steady stream of old friend visiting and helping her out.

Argh this bins talk has brought me straight back to my mum’s bin situation before she moved.

She had fractured two vertebrae and her neighbours had been taking her bins to the kerb (she had a gravel drive and massive bins as tall as she is) but it seemed wrong to rely on that.

After many phone calls I tracked down the correct council department and person and posted a note from her GP. Great, all good. But her lovely neighbours kept putting out the bins, and every time they did the system would reset and the council would stop taking the bins. If I wasn’t there she often didn’t notice until they were almost full so I would have to email. Then the crew would change seasonally and everything would stop again and I would have to wait for DM to notice and then I would email the council to refresh their memory etc etc.

One more thing from that era I don’t miss.

@HoneyButterPopcorn there a bucketful on the side. Be careful not to mix with too much gin though.

My mum is obsessed with recycling. She used to put all her fruit and veg scraps in a compost bin (she has a gardener) but it's at the end of the long garden and she was using a big bucket inside the house which took ages to fill with it just being her so only emptied it every few weeks and was a horrible smelly health hazard with those tiny flies around it, I tried and tried to get her to stop and just bin it all but no. Council finally introduced food recycling this month and I though oh good, this will help as they provide a small caddy but she can't get her head around the instructions for bag use AT ALL and is texting me virtually every day about it.

Where’s the vallium?

Yes for assisted bin collection. Also mums local council agreed to replace her numerous recycling bins with one mahoosive general waste bin. Like @rookiemere we had problems with used tena pants ending up in any bin except general waste.

it felt wrong putting recycling in a bin to be thrown away and some days I took some home and put it in my own, but generally it solved that particular problem.

(in their day mum and dad were the binfluencers on their street and put out the bins for people on holiday, so she’d done her turn)

We arranged that for mum, they needed to be left in front of the garage for access but she kept putting them in the garage as she thought it looked untidy. So we were forever going up to find out the bins hadn't been emptied yet again.

You've reminded me, we had to get that for my DGranny when they first introduced wheely bins "it's bigger than me!" she was tiny.

Sidetracking a bit, a few posters have mentioned arrangements for putting ER bins out. It may not be the case in all areas, but I found out that where DM lives the bin collection team will come on to the property to collect and replace bins for elderly people who can't manage to put them out themselves (as long as there is no locked gate and they can be seen from the road). It's called 'assisted bin collection'. It was arrange with just a call to the council- no proof of age/infirmity etc needed. It's only a small job but was one thing ticked off the list of reasons to have to visit or organise someone else to do.

@rookiemere to be fair they were polite, but I know enough to get out the bit about where I live early on in the conversation nowadays!

Bless them, they (HCPs) always start with, "nothing to worry about...", but tbh if Mother Nature had decided to gather her up in the night, it wouldn't be the worst thing.

ER's neighbours put her bins out, and they're are as old as she is, but much more fortunate as regards health and fitness.

@bigdogpaws that's the scenario I'm worried about. Just being able to totter a few steps with the walker and get to a commode and back would be a big win vs being immobile (which comes with big risks like pressure sores and pneumonia).

Cognitive soundness is at once a blessing (she won't forget she can't walk and try to get out of bed at 3am) and a curse (she knows what's happening to her and it's up to her to discuss ceilings of care etc with the medics).

Thanks @MittensTheKittens I am fairly sure it isn't a UTI this time. We've been through that before and it was mayhem! This is more strange somehow - talking about recurring dreams, not instantly recognising people, being unable to use her mobile phone after years of no problems. In other ways she is still fine so it's hard to gauge.

I think the issue of dealing with toileting is one of the many things that a more sensibly put together elderly care system could improve. My DF spend months in and out of a 'frailty' ward in hospital towards the end of his life due to lung problems. His actual illness did not prevent him from using the toilet normally but he was too frail to get there on his own so ended up having to use incontinence pads/pants simply because there were not enough staff members to reliably take him every time he needed to go. Which of course meant less dignity for him, more issues with sores etc and a more unpleasant and time-consuming job for the staff. The ward was noisy day and night, primarily due to patients with dementia/delirium etc which meant no patients got proper rest which won't have helped them. The staff were clearly trying their best but there simply were not enough people to have time to deal with every patient as they needed. My observation was that those with cognitive problems often had to be left (so that other patients could be helped) until they were in a position that they were likely to cause harm to themselves or others.
In reality most of the patients there didn't really need full hospital care- they would have been better off with some sort of nursing facility without doctors etc but with trained staff to keep them comfortable as they recovered from falls/infections etc. Of course, patients and their relatives would need to be aware that such a facility may not be able to offer the same actual treatments/emergency response etc as a hospital and this really does seem to be a conversation that many HCP seem very reluctant to have. Which I think is at the heart of a lot of this- the choice between focussing on quality of life towards the end, or extending life as long as possible. As @funnelfan mentioned, many of us have siblings who push for the latter, which doesn't help.

Thinking of the UTI and hospital delirium issue. One problem I saw with DM was the heavy dependence on catheters in hospital. She had a catheter for over a year and very frequent UTIs.

I think catheters were seen as the 'easy' and perhaps 'medical' approach. Now she has pads which require personal care rather than nursing care. She hasnt had a UTI for many months.

Toilet management is a huge problem in hospital when someone has restricted mobility. Commodes next to the bed are awful. The patient needs to be able to anticipate bladder and bowel needs so that there is time to summon help which can take a long time to come.

Toileting was a huge source of distress for DM.

You deserve a medal! I am squeamish about feet, even my own.

But you make an excellent point. My DM is diabetic. I know at some point she used to be visited by a podiatrist regularly.

In my town there is a foot clinic. For £30 he does a proper toenail cut. Not a podiatrist, kind of next level down but much more medical than a pedicure.

@MysterOfwomanY maybe the person doing the stretcher assessment is a vampire and has to be invited in.

@Podgedodge 🏆

@JeffLebowski it's horrible seeing them in distress. The worst memory of my DM's final stay in hospital was when she got a UTI and was completely out of her gourd. Her partner and I both thought she was dying-dying. Long story short, the next day I came in and found her chatting happily to the nurses - new antibiotics had sorted it.

Phone call this morning from the ward. "Has anyone called you about doing a stretcher assessment on ER's house?"
Fuxake, do they never a) talk to the patient b) write anything down. No.
I mean she's been bouncing in and out of hospital the past couple of years and they were in her house a week or two ago...

"I am (two counties away)... She has a key safe," I say with practiced civility.
"They can't use a key safe, someone has to let them in,"
(Oh dear, is there a bad apple in the paramedics who nicks stuff? I do not say.)
I say the neighbours are very helpful (bless them) and ER has their numbers.

I texted ER (because I do talk to her, unlike them, and sure she's old and frail, but broadly speaking the marble count is A-OK) and she said, "you're on holiday... I'm coping very well". Bless her.

I'm not actually worried that anything much will go wrong so I count myself lucky there. Thanks to Mr ER who left her v v comfortably off.

My vague plan is to go down next weekend when we're back. Depending on how she's doing, I can suggest she gets a private physio in daily to help her claw back as much function as she can.

The care home convo may be drawing closer. But she may just want to be At Home With Her Cat and I can understand that.

@Exhaustedpickle Oh no! Not another one.
Can you give her GP a ring and try to get her a quick appointment?

There is a dehydration, UTI and delerium bench over here, @JeffLebowski and I can budge up and give you some space, we have cranberry juice. 🙄

@Podgedodge great news that MIL has accepted the surgery. Sorry it makes you the bad guy though!

@Bweave is it not soap - anti bacterial?

My DM has been a bit bizarre this last couple of weeks and I'm concerned about cognitive decline. She has Parkinson's which can come with its own kind of dementia but I'm not sure what the next steps should be. I spoke to my Dsis who agrees that DM is behaving a bit strangely.