The week has been up and down in mood, I thought my mother might be sickening for something long before the sore throat was reported today. Yesterday she went screaming hysterical nuts on the phone because there are weeds in the front garden. There was a lengthy diatribe and a lot of swearing and wondering what the carers are doing with their time and how easy they have it, and here she is living in a slum what will the neighbours think. About three quarters of an hour of it.
I haven’t been out doing her front garden for a while I admit. I’m finding it difficult to keep up with everything. On the days we go to see her my feet hit the carpet at seven or half past and after that I’m running until I fall back into bed about half past ten because it’s impossible to stay awake much after that. This week for example, because I’m trying to get ready for Miniatura I left her shopping here until the morning we were going, so I got up extra early, cleared up the cat sick, fed the cats, did the shopping and got the petty cash and while the OT was having breakfast loaded the car. When we got there I needed to top up her account from her pension in the building society, so the OT sat in the car park while I did the run through the shopping centre to the building society then the dash along the high street to put the cheque in the bank, back to the car park and off to my mother’s. Arriving I made the lunch, did the lunch, the chat, the post, checked in with the carer, booked a boiler service, wrote the list and went and did the shopping. The OT sits with a coffee and the crossword while I run round the big supermarket. If they ever do trolley running as an Olympic sport, I’ll win. Back at the house I unloaded, chatted, did the fridge and the cupboards and sneaked the old stuff out to the bin. I regret this necessity but few things are as variable as the appetite of someone with no memory and she gets so hysterical if there is food left over. I don’t know if this is demented patients generally or my mother in particular. Certainly she has always used food as control, whether it is the wartime stories about the butter ration, starving me, or shopping for dinner parties, the amount of food and who is allowed to have it is crucial to her mental state. When she went nuts on the phone yesterday, a lot of it centred round the certainty that the carers were stealing her dried prunes.
One way and another whatever efforts are expended to ensure that the fridge always looks at the same level, are worthwhile. Too little food and she will become very anxious, too much and she is overwhelmed, all of which will evince itself in aggression.
After fridge control the OT and I went out to do the gardening. He has started helping me because he’s realised that if he’s in the garden he cannot be sitting in the house being talked at. So we got quite a lot of weeding done, generating three bags of rubbish to take home with us. Weeding at my parent’s house is very painful. My father was a builder, not a gardener. He got rid of a sloping lawn and replaced it with weed control fabric, laid under gravel. This sounds like it would have been a great idea if someone had told the weeds it was weed control fabric. As no one did, tiny weeds grow through it everywhere. Even with gloves on it’s a great way of keeping your fingernails short. It would take five minutes to mow a lawn that size, including the weeds, whereas it is a good five afternoons to weed every tiny weed packed square inch of it. It keeps me supple as long as I remember to put glucosamine gel on my knees before I go.
Then it’s tea serving, ably assisted by the carer who joins in. By this time of the day I have usually managed to soothe whatever concerns my mother has. Then we do money and the housekeeping. I have kept the system my father began when my parents first married, of a weekly handover of cash. My mother uses it to pay the window cleaners, the neighbour who brings the newspaper, the cleaner and her hairdresser. For actual food top ups and other items there is petty cash in the lockable cash box her pills are kept in, to which the carers have the key. This system works well. My mother retains the feeling of controlling the money and running the house, there is a link to the way things have always been done and she is still able to count the money in her purse. She always does so and then requests what she thinks she needs. I keep the residue here, topping it up but not each week, depending. It is a handy way to keep a check on her ability to recognise the notes, name them and count them, without ever overtly requesting such a demonstration.
Then we go and that’s it. I am more or less exhausted, not usually depending on the physical effort but more on how much talking down has been needed, basically on how demented she is. There is always something extra. This week it was wallpaper paste to stick down the paper in the cloakroom and a forehead and ear thermometer, bought, familiarised demonstrated and so on. Recently my mother seems unable to know if she is ill or not. As she can run with sweat for no apparent reason it is difficult to tell if she is running a temperature. The forehead thermometer actually says out loud if the patient’s temperature is abnormal. I told her about it, showed it and tried it on her. I did it as incompetently and hilariously as possible, including sticking it in her ear, so that whatever the carers do will be acceptable and less fuss than I made and so that they can keep an eye on what she is really doing, body temperature wise, as opposed to what she is complaining about.
She complains she is having trouble sleeping. She complains endlessly while people rush around her fetching, carrying, heating her slippers, weeding, shopping, getting her pills, cleaning, caring and everything else-ing. Strangely I never have trouble sleeping and I shouldn’t think the carers have much difficulty either.. I’m sure there must be a clue to it somewhere in there but I’m too tired to work it out.
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JaneLaverick.knackered.com
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