The Cockroach Cafe Mark 3

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Morning all! regulars or newbies, coping with your oldies is a frustrating, exhausting and difficult business however much we love them. The Cockroach Cafe is open to all, a place to vent, rant, ask questions, get advice, and hopefully laugh too.

If your question is big, it's best to start a new thread, and get all the advice together in one place. But for everything else, the cafe is the right place.

For newbies: why cockroach? Yolo's DM attended a 'small animal event' in a nursing home, and was presented with a "small animal with a hard back" the name of which species she couldn't remember. Her ever helpful DB suggested cockroach, and it has become a toast on here. So cockroach mes amis/amies, and may you all live to fight another day.

I love about 5 mins drive and 20 min walk from mums
My siblings both live closer sarcastic laughter
My car battery died today so I'll be walking until I can get it fixed and tomorrow ds1 and I are having a lord-of-the-rings-a-thon 😁

...tomorrow ds1 and I are having a lord-of-the-rings-a-thon 😁

Nice! I'm more of a Hobbit girl...if only for Thorin and Bard

Oh we did that last weekend
(Team Kili all the way)

Dealing with all the stuff for DM is never bloody ending.

Well I have had a bit of a break-although not for the right reasons.

DM is in hospital with delirium which maybe caused by her having tested positive for Covid. She has been in for 10 days now and is still no better. No breathing difficulties at the moment. She had her vaccine a week before she tested positive so hoping it may have lessened the symptoms.

There is no way she can come home the way she is so I think we are looking at respite care again to see if the delirium subsides. Hey ho.

fly I hope the vaccine lessens the COVID impact and your dm can get some decent respite care- and give you a break..
nota I hear you- two hours at dms today to hear her say “I haven’t seen anyone in months” plus sorting out video call tomorrow as a hospital appt......
cockroach all.

Hope you get some good news this week fly

Delirium is a strange one. I'm lucky Dad hasn't often been distressed by his bouts and I just roll with it so we have some very comical conversations.

I arrived on Thursday night to find him absolutely incensed about the late arrival of his dinner and lamentable lack of peas and sweetcorn. He was hellbent on complaining to the staff and the management (he's actually the most mild mannered bloke you could meet and would always leave anything like that to mum!).

Mum is constantly getting aerated because she can't hear/understand what he's going on about and I keep reassuring her that 95% of the time, smiling and nodding is a sufficient response. It's not ideal but there's if she gets wound up and starts pressuring him to be clearer it's just more distressing for him.

I'm lucky I suppose that at least when I'm in the middle of dealing with it I'm pretty unflappable...it's round the edges it all comes apart.

nota the admin and micromanaging is probably my least favourite part (not least cos it involves mum more than dad ).

And the fact that at the moment she always seems to have appointments so I can't even have any flexibility about when I'm there, just get told when I need to turn up.

Pretty new to all this but FIL admitted to hospital after increasingly irrational behaviour and possible kidney problems . He is on a ward for frail elderly complex needs after being aggressive and quote ‘over familiar’ ( an ongoing issue)

Our biggest issue though is the free hospital phones , the hospital cannot deprive him of access other than unplugging but he just plugs them back in. He seems to have an encyclopaedic memory for phone numbers, he calls us and my MIL incessantly and is abussive and hysterical this has resulted in my MIL and other people he has called turning up at the hospital to collect him. He has called his 100 year old father and threatened him and it’s very distressing for all concerned. He wanted my dh to pick him up and two other ‘inmates’ The hospital say to ignore the calls but it is incessant, we have unplugged our phone as we hardly use it but I feel awful doing this, but older members of the family really are not comfortable doing this and don’t have caller display either . He is very aggressive and threatening if they do pick up.

Has anyone had this problem, what did you do ?

@Peaseblossom22 hi and welcome. Wow that sound awful and I am surprised that the hospital are allowing him unrestricted use of a phone. I know first hand how distressing non stop calls are but not when they are abusive like you are experiencing.

I had to block my DM's number to get a bit of peace periodically but I guess you can't do that. I think you need to make a fuss with the hospital and they need to remove the phone completely from his bay. I have never heard of someone having a free phone from their hospital bed, DM has to use a portable phone which the nurses take to her. Is this a private hospital or NHS?

Hi flygirl thank you for replying , it’s just our local NHS hospital, the phones as far as we can gather are linked to the TV system and calls are free to 01,02, and 03 numbers . My ds was recently in hospital for another reason and he has confirmed this . In his ward there was one for every bed , we get the impression it’s fewer on FIL ward.

The ward have said that they cannot remove access as that would constitute a deprivation of Liberty but at the same time they are reassuring us that he cannot leave and surely that’s a greater deprivation ? They keep unplugging them but he just wanders around I think until he finds another , he is so aggressive that I cannot believe they can’t hear him but he is pretty wiley so I expect he waits until no one is around.

We feel very out of touch with him as well , he has been there a week and since last Friday when he had a scan not a lot seems to be happening , it probably is but unless we phone and ask we don’t hear anything. I am sure to him it does feel like he has been imprisoned but every time he does speak to someone it is to get aggressive so it’s impossible to reassure him or have any kind of conversation . There is no visiting because of Covid .

Thank you very much for the welcome by the way, reassign sons of these threads I am in awe of you all .

Peaseblossom Personally I would block the number but that's easy for me as I have a phone that would do it and caller id. I think there are many of us here that have a feeling of dread when the phone rings AGAIN and that's without it being abusive.

What can be done about it? Hanging up the instant the call becomes abusive, each and every time because no-one has to listen to that. That assumes that you are going to take the call at all, I can't imagine life without caller id. After 9pm my phone rings only for people in my address book, I have a different ring tone for people I know. I didn't use any of the features my phone had before I was trying to paint and had come down the ladder multiple times to answer calls from people trying to part me from my money. It might have been mum or my husband or school so I gave them a different ring tone and then could happily ignore all the others.

If the hospital is unwilling or unable to restrict access to a phone then it is on each member of the family to deal with it as best they can. They can wait for the answering machine to pick up if they have one, read the manual for the phone they have to see if it has features they aren't using or speak to their phone provider to see if they have something they can offer to deal with persistant nuisance callers. The technology that exists for scam callers is what is needed here.

I hope that this is a temporary behaviour that will vanish when they get to the bottom of what his problem is.

Thank you @Knotaknitter all good advice , I think one of the problems is that quite a few of the people he is calling are very elderly themselves, not in the best of health and not owning mobiles so the landline is their only form of communication and their carers/relatives are now getting agitated and understandably expecting us to sort it out from our end which so far we seem to be powerless to do. In addition each phone has a different number we have found about five so far as dmfast as we block in he uses another 😮

What exactly do the relatives expect you to do? You are not in a position to take a phone from him, there is nothing at all you can do about it especially as you can't visit. Give the relatives the number of the ward to call and complain and if they don't want to do that well that's too bad. If he was using your phone to call it would be different but you're not responsible for him, you can't even see him at the moment. You have enough on without being able to magically fix things that are not in your control.

You are of course completely right but in their eyes we are responsible and also they are not all relatives some are people who used to be his customers when he was in business.

I think my main query is are the hospital correct legally and also how do we approach my FIL calling people have other people had any success in actually persuading their relative that they are in the best place for the moment .

But it sounds like it’s just another thing. I cannot believe that it has all happened so fast , less than a year ago he was still picking my son up from school 🙁

A possibility for relatives without caller recognition is to always let the phone go to answerphone. Then if it's someone they want to speak to they can pick up as soon as they recognise them. Not perfect - FIL will doubtless leave abusive messages, but may be prefereable to unplugging completely.

From what you describe, the hospital can't deprive him of phone access without depriving everyone else in the ward.

Not that I have any good solutions to your problem, but I recognize this. My ddad had delirium when in hospital and became a totally different person, feeling imprisoned, talking of doing a runner all the time. Staff shrugged it off (suppose they were used to delirium behavior) until one of his escapes went to a contaminated restricted ward. After this they put a guard with him (any trainee or other available).

I think your only option is to contact the ward and stress it is vulnerable people he is calling and ask for any way of limiting his phone use.

If you haven't encountered this behavior before it is worth reading up on delirium. It's very weird and scary to witness unprepared.

Sorry that was for @Peaseblossom22.

Hi Its Flygirl767 here, had a well overdue name change as I definitely can no longer be considered a girl and sadly not flying anywhere anymore!

DM is about to be discharged from hospital as she is now Covid free. I was advised that she is off to an EMI CH in a different town (only 15 minutes from her house but opposite direction to me) While location is not an issue, the fact that is EMI and deals with people with challenging behaviour does. I know she has delirium but normally she is quiet and well behaved, just anxious and somewhat confused. I feel sick at the thought of her being somewhere full of disruptive residents, she will be terrified. I was not consulted but just told this was the only bed in the area available to suit her needs. I think it is more likely that most homes do not someone who is coming from a Covid ward! Not much I can do but just feel the battle with Social Services is just about to start again..

@OnthePiste

Oh God I'm so sorry you've had that sprung on you. Fingers crossed she will be in her own room and they will have some sort of system for separating the less significantly affected residents.

I know that sound awful but I still remember my dad's experience in hospital two years ago and can totally understand your concerns. That said when he was moved to the rehab unit, they had a designated area for dementia patients so they and the other patients all got the care they needed.

I know from my discussions over the last week with the CHC that there's very limited availability at the moment because as soon as anyone tests positive in a care home they quarantine for 28 days.

Hello Pease can’t add to the advice here but welcome.
piste sorry to hear about your dm. Can’t really add anything but sending sympathy. You must feel so helpless.🌺

@MintyCedric thank you, she will have her own room so at least that will be a bonus after being in W hospital on a shared Covid ward!

Has your DM made any decisions about moving your DF to that CH? Or have you looked at any others? Shame the beds are so limited at the moment, normally you would have so many to pick from.

@OnthePiste

She's spoken to dad. He doesn't want to go anywhere...

So minty will they accept more care at home?

@MintyCedric That's a bummer. There is no light at the end of the tunnel then.