Morning,
Good news on the one day off from the physio, Spamar - not so good on the misery from the hay fever/allergies
Last night was again realy humid here, I slept (or tried to!) with no covers and the ceiling fan whirling at top speed. I thought yesterday evening, that we were in for a good old thunder storm, the sky had that gorgeous dark blue 'storm light', but no - it just stayed hot and oppressive. This morning it does feel a little fresher and is overcast, but its still unusually warm for this time of year.
I love 'mooching' round a good garden centre, Amy, and there are a lot in this area - but we have one that is quite near to us, Chester way, called the Grosvenor which is especially fabulous (though it can also be a little bit on the expensive side!) This one sells not only plants and general gardening equipment and furniture, but also a lot of other 'nice things' - candles, organic jams (jelly, I think you call them), books, lovely bits and bobs for the home, it has an aquarium and at Christmas, a huge area there is turned into the most amazing sort of grotto, absolutely beautiful - we like to go just to look, even if we are not buying (though we usually end up doing that too
). Mil used to love going to places like that, though like Slugsta's Mum, it eventually got to the stage where it was just the cafe and the cake that she showed any interest in. It sounds like you and OH are working hard to get your Mum's new abode sorted for her - I hope you are able to overcome the issues with fitting the essentials into a smaller space. When Mil moved here, obviously there wasn't room for most of her furniture, but I struggled to know what I should keep or throw of the 'small stufff' - ornaments, keepsakes, her collection of china plates, ect. At the moment, they are all packed into two 4-drawer storage units, plus a couple of very large plastic storage boxes, and in what will be my office. They will have to be moved - but I have no idea where to at the moment. For some reason, I am not comfortable with the idea of just getting rid of them - I have no idea what, if anything, they would mean to Mil now, but they are things that she must have collected and kept for a reason, and it feels wrong just to throw away or donate them to a charity shop.
Slugsta, I think that I need to follow your advice, especially over the first few months when I'm settling into the job and there is so much to do. Things will ease - at least I hope they will - when we get Mil settled somewhere, and I've also had stern words with the rest of the household about pulling their weight - the trouble with being 'at home' for the last 3 years is that I've fallen into the habit of doing the bulk of the household jobs and its now just 'accepted' that 'Mum will do it'. That will have to change!
Katrine is probably right about the liquid capacity of the pull ups - it varies so much, and when I was buying them for Mil, some brands were MUCH better than others. I was able to tell the clinic that Mil needed 'super-absorbency' (which she definitely did at night) but even then, as I believe is often the case, the ones the clinic supplied were not always up to the job and still left us with some nights when Mil managed to 'flood' the bed
I would speak to the continence nurse asap, if only to ask for high absobency pull ups on your Mum's order. I'd also be pretty fed up over the washing machine not being turned on - for goodness sake, surely common sense would have told the carer that it needed doing? Not good
Red has a good point about a UTI maybe making the incontinence worse at the moment - mil always had far more 'accidents' when she had that sort of infection.
And talking of washing, I'm not happy with what happened when we visited Mil yesterday, as regards her washing! OH and I had decided to go see her just after 4pm, but just as we were leaving, I got a phone call re the job and it lasted about 35 minutes (it was very helpful, so I'm definitely not complaining!). Once it was over, we never stopped to consider the time, just headed down and it wasn't till we were let into the ward that it struck us that we had arrived just as tea was being served. We apologised profusely, were assured it was OK and that they would set Mil up with a table in the 'lounge' area, so we could stay with her while she was eating. That was really nice of the staff and we did appreciate it. However . . . as Mil was tucking into her sausage and mash, one of the staff walked over with one of the 'laundry' plastic carrier bads, and dumping it at my feet, announced it was Mil's washing and walked away. It wasn't sealed in any way at all and the smell of stale urine was awful - and there was poor Mil, eating
I was fuming - I know OH had a point when he said that it was our fault that we had arrived at such a busy time and that it was probably just an 'oversight' on the part of the staff, but personally, I really didn't think that was acceptable at all
I rather obviously made a point of tying up the handles of the bag to try and seal it - though I honestly don't think that the staff concerned even noticed!
Aside from that, poor Mil wasn't in a good place at all - she was already tearful when we went in, whispering something about
'Its not the daughter, its the mother that does it' (?) - hard to catch what she was trying to tell us as she was very paranoid that the 'bosses' might overhear what she was saying and was speaking so quietly. Once again, there was something about her sending off
'the stuff to enroll in college' - but again, she was clearly worried about that issue too, though we couldn't work out why
She jumped through several abrupt changes of conversation, with no apparent link of subject between one sentence and the next, but everything she said was something she was worried or upset about. It didn't help that some of the other patients were also entering sundowning time, and that two ladies in particular kept coming over - one determined to take Mil's tissues or (for some reason) pulling at the fabric of the dress I was wearing, and the other repeatedly coming over and quite belligerently asking a variety of nonsensical (to us) questions, interrupting Mil or us speaking, and both ladies were really ticking Mil off. For once there was no 'Isn't it time you went?' comments, and we were able to stay for about 45 minutes - however, we had a lot of upset when we tried to leave, with Mil pleading couldn't we take her and '
drop her off at 'S*** and Ann's house, please?' and her insisting that she didn't want to stay 'here', she was going 'home'. When the second lady came over to again interrupt at this point, Mil told her to 'go away' (in no uncertain terms!) and that sparked her starting to get quite cross. It took us about 10 minutes, and OH having to firmly tell her that she had to stay (so her medication could be sorted by the doctor, an explanation she usually accepts) and us basically walking away as she was still calling out to us - really not nice and quite upsetting
It was a sad day for us anyway, as news came that a chap that OH has supported off and on for years had passed away. We knew he was very ill, OH had visited him in hospital, and his death was expected - but he was such a character, very lovable and it left us both (because I knew him quite well too) feeling a bit down.
I had planned on today being my first 'full' day off since starting work - I am contracted for just 28 hours pw - but some of the planning and stuff I did yesterday has left me waiting on a couple of emails that I'll have to keep an eye open for, and deal with if they arrive. One of the things that I absolutely have to do is sort out regular days 'working' and days 'off' and stick to them - it would be very easy to find myself working at least part of every day in the week if I'm not careful! At the moment, my plan is to work 4 x 7 hour days a week, from either Mon to Thurs, or Tues to Fri - its a routine that I absolutely need to get into asap!
Hope you all have as good a day as is possible
xxx
