Help planning care after cataract surgery

silkiest

Registered User
Feb 9, 2017
865
0
Hi my mum has been told she has a dense cataract and needs surgery to remove it. Her vision is severely affected which is not helping her alzheimers. She already has dry eyes which increase the risk of complications and she does not use the drops supplied for this. She lives with my dad who is blind so he cannot instil drops for her and can't prompt her as she tells him off for telling her what to do.
I'm at my wits end trying to put a plan in place to ensure her post surgery care is adequate. She will need drops 4 times daily with a mixture of dry eye drops, steroid and antibiotic drops for varying lengths of time depending on how she heals. My brother has a 3 hour round trip and says her cannot afford to do regular visits to help with the drops drops ( self employed, no income). I can't visit 4 times daily - also look after MIL with alzheimers and cancer. I can't have them both to stay with me - dad goes mad if he cannot go out for daily walks and due to his blindness he would not be able to go out in our area. I can't have just mum staying - mum and dad have been married 66 years and dad cannot cope alone. Local authority carers won't put in eye drops . I can't put her in respite care for this period of up to 6 weeks as I then wouldn't be able to take her out for follow up visits without her being isolated in the home for 2 weeks after each visit!
I've only recently stopped daily visits to dress her leg following skin cancer surgery, that was exhausting enough. I'm not looking forward to this at all.
 

Louise7

Volunteer Host
Mar 25, 2016
4,694
0
@silkiest You're certainly going to have your hands full but it sounds as though your mum's post-op care would fall under the remit of a district nurse. Have you spoken to her GP to ask if something can be put in place?
 

silkiest

Registered User
Feb 9, 2017
865
0
Hi @Louise7
the District Nurses cover the whole of a long valley and several practices. They can be very variable with the time of day they attend due to priorities of patients etc. When coming before they have turned up any time between 8am and 9pm so I don't hold out much hope for them coming within an hour of the time the drops are needed 4 times daily. Thats why I ended up doing the dressings earlier in the year- it was easier than trying to constantly talk to their telephone answering service about no shows , and then waiting for an actual nurse to call back. Unfortunately the GP has no other telephone number to contact them than the answering service that I can contact myself. Oh for the old days when District Nurses were attached to individual surgeries ?
 

Hayley JS

Registered User
Feb 20, 2020
301
0
Are you sure your mum will be able to cope with the surgery? I took mum for her cataract op a couple of months ago. All was fine in the pre-op and waiting area, but once she was in surgery and separated from me she had a melt down and that was the end of that. Still waiting for referral info re how now to best proceed.
 

Frank24

Registered User
Feb 13, 2018
420
0
I remember this nightmare all too well. Couldn’t get any support for this. Do you have any kind neighbours? I managed to get one to do 2 and a paid Carer did the others.
 

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