Mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer's a few months ago, and Dad has been her primary carer. She has on occasion rocked up at our house needing to "have a conversation", she said. Dad has recently been diagnosed with macular degeneration, as well as cataracts, and I think being forced into looking after Mum as well hasn't been good for his mental health - in fact, he did make an appointment to see the doctor about being diagnosed with depression.
But events conspired against him and on the morning of 24th July, Dad was taken into hospital. Mum raised the alarm with the neighbours and they called an ambulance. Dad was taken to A&E and then admitted as an in-patient, where he has been for the last three weeks. Today is the three-week anniversary, which is probably worth marking but not celebrating - I'm not some sort of weirdo.
The doctors have known what the next steps are for over a week now, but treatment is being help up by the lack of a bed (and possibly appropriate levels of staff/care) in Haywards Heath hospital. Currently it is just a case of checking daily that he is still in Worthing hospital, and then booking to see him.
My sister and I have kept Mum company since Dad went into hospital. I don't think I've ever spent so much time with her, at least, not that I can remember. She's okay physically, but mentally she's losing words, so it is difficult for her to form a full sentence. She needs a lot of prompting and suggestion for those missing words. Also, if people are not in front of her, she begins to forget them, so for instance today she bumped into one of her neighbours who asked how Dad was, and she suggested to him that he come and talk to me to get an update. But when she told me someone was coming, she couldn't say that he was a neighbour, he was "a man", and as she had just come back from church, I thought it was someone from church.
So the upshot of that is that Mum probably needs live-in care. She has trouble using the door keys, and she is beginning to get muddled when she makes tea, and she has never (as far as I am aware) used the oven - that was new, a few months ago, more or less at the same time that she was diagnosed with dementia.
She doesn't want care, but she doesn't want to be on her own in the house either, so I think that might help persuade her that actually it is for her own good.
It does seem to me sometimes that Mum and Dad were just marking time, and there are times when I have talked to them both over the last three weeks and they are shadows of their former selves. And it does get me down. But then we have a lovely sunny warm day like today and actually things don't look too bad. And I am encouraged to make the most of what I've got, and to enjoy life as long as I can. I must remember that I don't always need to say "no" to things, and maybe sometimes the best option is not to sit on my behind reading opinion pieces on social media. Sometimes it might be nice to look back and be able to say "I'm glad I did that".
