Today was one of those days when you wonder if life, the universe and everything has just got it in for you! Having left mum in bed for a few days since her last TIA and fall last Friday, I successfully got her up with the rotunda this morning and onto the commode. Managed a quick wash and got her dressed. The carer arrived for a two hour session and I went to buy some food, then we did another commode transfer with mum. Decided to then put her into her recliner in the lounge. Fortunately I have two slings for the hoist, so am now going to leave one permanently on her wheelchair and the other in the recliner so that if she gets 'stranded' due to a further TIA/weakness, I can at least hoist her out. We managed to transfer her up to the recliner, but I had forgotten to lift the footrest slightly so that the rotunda footplate could fit under it. Would you believe it, just at that moment we had a power cut! So back round we went to the wheelchair, now having to contend with the edge of a rug, which I thought nothing of when we started the procedure as didn't think we'd need to abort. We nearly lost mum between rotunda and wheelchair because with her standing on the rotunda, it was nigh on impossible to lift the wheels over the edge of the rug. Lesson learnt for next time. I called the number to report power cuts and they assured me that mum is a 'number one priority' on their register and that if the power was going to be out for a while, they would probably arrange for a small generator to be delivered so that I could at least operate the bed. As it was, the power came back about an hour and a half later, and she's now snoozing in the recliner. To be fair, I had three call backs asking if we were OK and assuring me the power would be back soon, so that seems to work OK.
I had a bit of a weird experience last week with the care agency. When they recruit new carers, they send them out to shadow the experienced ones until they can be let loose on their own. You know when you'll get a shadow carer as they put it on the weekly schedule (doesn't happen that often), and of course they do not charge for this. Well, I saw the name, but it meant nothing to me. When the two ladies arrived for that particular call, I thought that I knew the second carer from somewhere. And then I realised - she had, until very recently, been working at another local establishment and had been very offhand, almost rude to me, there a few times. I had almost considered a complaint to the manager about her attitude. And now here she was, in my home, standing in the corner of the room, while we were toileting and washing mum. It made me feel quite uncomfortable and I actually wonder now if I should have said something when she arrived, but how could I have justified refusing her entry into mum's bedroom based on my experience with her at the other place? I doubt they will be sending her to mum as a regular, but if I see her on the programme, I will probably ask them not to send her here, I guess I could always say 'personal reasons'. It's so strange that all our private and financial information is so closely guarded and yet our 'privates' can be displayed to someone who only recently was doing a completely different type of job. Isn't that weird people, or is it me? I guess it's just another thing we have to contend with as carers/family of PWDs.
I'm beginning now to wonder at what point I stop trying to keep mum mobile in some sense, but I guess I will know when that time comes - it will be when mum can't stand on the rotunda any more. I did three changes in bed yesterday myself - that's the most I will have to do on any one way as I always have at least one carer call a day. It wasn't easy, but it was doable. Better brace myself, as it's coming soon, I think. I have asked for a couple of extra morning calls next week to help me out, and if mum's strength fails to return this time, I will probably keep them in place. I'm going to have to change my mindset about this toileting issue soon if I want to keep mum at home!