Introduction (continued)
Yes, that was just the beginning of the introduction as it is so difficult to know where to start and how much to tell.
Later that same day she was admitted to hospital suffering from cystitis and malnutrition, and I had the local policeman and his wife accusing me of leaving my mother dying of starvation with no food in the house. (1) She wasn't dying. (2) There was loads of food in the house, much of it brought by my brother and myself. (3) Only a few days before she'd been boasting to other neighbours about being self-sufficient because she could order groceries on the Internet.
During the first part of her 25 days in hospital I attributed her fairly wild mental state to delirium (she was clearly feverish) and malnutrition/dehydration. As she improved physically she became cooler and calmer yet a lot of what she was saying still seemed nonsensical, and she could say one thing to one person and another to another, convincing each that she was telling the truth. E.g. she could tell one social worker that she wanted to go in a home and another that she definitely did not want to go in a home.
My brother wanted her to go into a home straight from the hospital, I wanted to get her home to her own house and rehabilitate her in familiar surroundings and with people she already knew, which was in fact what happened.
Meanwhile hospital staff were confusing us all with their various versions, e.g. the OT on one ward saying there'd be an intermediate care team to help at home for the first 6 weeks, which didn't happen.
My mother hardly knew where she was when she first got home. Every morning began with "Where am I?" "Where do you think you are?" "Now, let me see, let me guess. Let me see if I can guess where I am." This turned into a ritual joke, when she had gradually grasped that she was in her own home where she'd lived for 52 years.
The first 5 weeks were very hard for me physically, as she had regressed into a baby/toddler phase, and was determined to be as difficult as possible.
I got the doctor because of her refusing to eat or drink, and he stopped all the medication of which I was sure she was taking too much. He sent the nurses along, and they contacted Social Services. My brother cancelled Social Services because he thought it was better to hire someone useless from a private agency.
In the end he got onto Social Services himself because she hit him.
She was improving in spite of occasional lapses, and I was impressed by all the little milestones, e.g. the first time she let me wash and dress her, the first time we went out for a walk and visited neighbours, the first time she made a cup of tea for herself without any prompting or assistance, the first time she noticed with pleasure the birds in the garden eating the remains of her meals on wheels.
The Social Worker arranged 3 carer visits a day, and gradually my mother got used to letting the carers in and allowing them to do things for her. (2 months later she still needs reminding what to tell them to do.)
She makes up silly stories about people e.g. she tells everyone about a set of triplets living in the house opposite hers. There are 4 children in that family, all of different sizes and ages, and before she was ill she knew exactly how old they all were. When a friend whom we have known for 40 years came to visit she thought she was Dorothy Wordsworth. She was pleased but not surprised that Dorothy Wordsworth came to tea. Perhaps for some people such fantasies are normal, they wouldn't have been normal for my mother before her illness.
She had a whole day assessment at the hospital and again managed to convince doctors that there is nothing wrong with her, it's just "old age". Well, I have known quite a few elderly people her age and older, including those of her own family we helped to look after, they don't all behave the way she's been behaving.
The doctors said she does not require full-time attendance and can make whatever arrangements she likes with Social Services, and that if she wants to go out for walks late at night inadequately dressed that's up to her. (Of course neighbours and relatives blamed me for letting her go out in her nightclothes or after dark, but as she can get violent if she doesn't have her own way I don't know how I could stop her.)
So I gradually spent more time in my own home, until now my plan for the time being is only to go back fortnightly to order her food and stock up her kitchen.
She phones me several times a day and we go through her boring daily routine, mostly about what she has eaten or is going to eat. Sometimes it is difficult to guess what she means, e.g. when she tells me she is going to eat an egg on toast with a carpet-beater. A whisk, I suggest? Scrambled eggs? I still don't know what the carpet-beater was, in this context.
