As you might have seen, mum’s been in hospital for 5 weeks now and they recently confirmed Alzheimer’s. We obviously can’t visit her in person, so the hospital have proudly announced the fact that a FaceTime service is available any time relatives want to chat with their loved ones. Well, that’s the theory anyway.
Although over the last few weeks this has worked fairly well, my brother and I have been trying to talk to mum since Tuesday with no luck at all. There’s been absolutely no response from the messaging account that we use to request our chats. (The process is to send a request with a time we’d like to chat, and they then call us at that time and have the ipad in front of mum ready to see us). I even called them on Wednesday and spoke to a staff nurse who confirmed the girl who monitors the ipad WAS around, and said he’d chivvy her up to sort a call with us. Nothing. My brother tried again yesterday - sending messages with no response, and tried calling the ward but the line was constantly engaged.
Poor mum! I can’t help but worry that she was told on Tuesday that she has Alzheimer’s and hasn’t spoken to us since - she might be thinking we’ve rejected her! The only small comfort is that when we DO speak she doesn’t tend to remember specifics about when we last spoke, so perhaps she’s not actually too aware of the time that’s passed since our last chat? Probably the only good thing about her lack of lucidity!
In the meantime, I posted her a book I thought she’d enjoy, which arrived on Wednesday. And today I sent her a card via ‘Thortful’ with a message to say we’ve been trying to speak to her but have had some issues getting through, but that we wanted to let her know we’re thinking of her lots. That should arrive tomorrow/Monday hopefully.
No advice requests this time, I’m just venting ;-)
Although over the last few weeks this has worked fairly well, my brother and I have been trying to talk to mum since Tuesday with no luck at all. There’s been absolutely no response from the messaging account that we use to request our chats. (The process is to send a request with a time we’d like to chat, and they then call us at that time and have the ipad in front of mum ready to see us). I even called them on Wednesday and spoke to a staff nurse who confirmed the girl who monitors the ipad WAS around, and said he’d chivvy her up to sort a call with us. Nothing. My brother tried again yesterday - sending messages with no response, and tried calling the ward but the line was constantly engaged.
Poor mum! I can’t help but worry that she was told on Tuesday that she has Alzheimer’s and hasn’t spoken to us since - she might be thinking we’ve rejected her! The only small comfort is that when we DO speak she doesn’t tend to remember specifics about when we last spoke, so perhaps she’s not actually too aware of the time that’s passed since our last chat? Probably the only good thing about her lack of lucidity!
In the meantime, I posted her a book I thought she’d enjoy, which arrived on Wednesday. And today I sent her a card via ‘Thortful’ with a message to say we’ve been trying to speak to her but have had some issues getting through, but that we wanted to let her know we’re thinking of her lots. That should arrive tomorrow/Monday hopefully.
No advice requests this time, I’m just venting ;-)