It’s three weeks on from my last update, where has the time gone?
Mum’s still keeping herself busy and has spent most of the last few weeks reading. Card making has been put away and scrapbooking hasn’t really taken off yet. She has plenty of things to stick on the pages but I’m wondering if there is too much blank page and she doesn’t know where to start. I have bought her a dementia friendly coloring book and 35-piece jigsaw for her birthday. I know she will be enthusiastic with the colouring book and the jigsaw is more an activity for when I am able to get a companion-type carer to start visiting.
We haven’t had any house guests since Bob the cat’s visit back in September however we picked up a couple of hitchhikers when mum had her Covid vaccination at the surgery on Saturday…we now have the nice woman and man on the front of the ‘a guide for older adults’ staying with us
I was starting to feel bad that she didn’t have anyone other than me to talk to (or my other me who is occasionally here). I have a good explanation for when it’s time for them to leave, they need to go back to the surgery to help the next people being vaccinated. But they can stay for now.
A couple of weeks ago I went to see if she fancied a cup of coffee and found her on the bathroom floor unable to get back up. It took best part of an hour to get her to crawl through to the sitting room and then bit by bit, cushion by cushion to get her back on the sofa and upright again. I think she needed to go to the toilet, but because she had been sitting too long that she couldn’t get to her feat, or they wouldn’t weight-bear so crawled through to the toilet, thinking once she was there, she’d be able to get back up off the floor. She hadn’t wanted to disturb me so hadn’t called out. I have now invested in an emergency lifting cushion to make rescue and recovery a bit quicker (there is sure to be another time when she will need picking up off the floor)
Do you remember my concerns that mum would want to physically hand Christmas cards to her TV friends? The day before her birthday she looked at the clock/calendar and declared ‘it’s my birthday tomorrow, I must find a way to let xxx (her favourite TV friend) know’. I distracted that thought with the offer to make a cup of coffee. However, that evening I made the mistake of putting on a DVD with xxx in it. After a while I could see her writing something out of the corner of my eye. She then stood up and held the note out towards the TV.
Fortunately, the scene changed, and she sat down and didn’t try again. I sat staring at the TV trying to come up with something to say in reply to anything she might say, but she said nothing
Sunday, the day after her Covid vaccination she was very achy, sleepy and headachy and dozed a fair amount of the day (it only lasted 24 hours). Towards the evening I could hear one of her hearing aids squeaking as if was falling out of her ear. I got her up off the sofa and searched around but couldn’t find it, shook all her clothing and then she took it out of her mouth…’is this it?’ I give her a small bowl of mixed nuts each day to snack on. The hearing aid must have fallen out while she was dozing and she must have seen it and thought it was a cashew nut! It was probably the moisture from trying to eat it that made it squeak. Supposing she had swallowed it? I would have had to order a replacement as there is no way I would wait for it to reappear
It is now a year since mum first saw her doctor and had her referral to the memory clinic. She has a telephone appointment in two weeks for a dementia check-up. Looks like our surgery is reasonably proactive in keeping in touch with their dementia patients. I’m not sure how mum will feel about the call or what questions will be asked. Maybe I will get an extra nice lunch ready to make her feel better once the call has taken place. While we don’t mention the word at home, we can’t pretend it doesn’t exist because it ain’t gonna go away, is it?
