I’m sorry this posting is a bit late, there has been a panic on to say the least. Last time I spoke to the second in command of the care team, at the point at which my mother was not speaking to me last week, the carer was of the opinion that from that point on the dementia was really going to bite and it was going to get harder.
She was not wrong. Having decided on Thursday that I was an agent of evil at least, by Friday my mother had spread her net to include all the carers, particularly the young man who was there at the time, who she threw out of the house, verbally if not bodily. At this stage of proceedings I am glad that the same indolence that has partially caused the lack of blood flow in my mother’s brain has also caused an atrophy of the muscles; my mother has gained a stone in weight over the last few weeks but no one could call her strong. I was glad of this when I remembered that the long carved curved thing that has been on the sideboard in the lounge of the house she inhabits ever since they moved in, is, in fact, a sword. It takes strength to draw a sword, which probably cannot be done if you are relying on your walking stick to get you up out of the chair. Nevertheless I have informed the care team of what the item is, so that if she goes for it, they know to get out of the way and not just think she is wielding a carved, curved stick. How glad I am that we found and disposed of the starting pistol after my father died. The locked gun cabinets up in the loft have been empty ever since the last police amnesty. I was always awaiting the call to defend my father in court but he never succumbed to the temptation to stop the incessant mindless chatter, for which I was grateful, though I had the speech ready, vaguely, for many years.
With the carers we are going to resort to an official instrument, once I’ve removed the unofficial sword.
On Friday after the young man was ejected, the manageress of the care team rang to see what they should do. I could not go. The other half, who is also being very aggressive and difficult, was on the golf course and I was getting ready for the show and had the kiln on. You cannot leave a kiln which is at 1200 degrees for five hours to go off to talk your demented mother down. At this point I was ready to see what giving up my inheritance by £10,000 each month would get me. What it got was the manageress, who abandoned two meetings and sitting with a dying client to go and sort my mother out. She did so with a email dictated to me on the phone and sent at once, giving my permission for the care team to be in my mother’s house against her wishes, in order to care for her.
Throughout the afternoon I was involved and got hourly updates. I suggested, when the carers could escape from the bedroom they were hiding in and could get downstairs, that they unplug the phone, in case my mother spread her aggression to her elderly sister and sister-in-law and they dropped dead of a heart attack, which sounded on the phone as if the carers would quite like to do, to escape from the situation. It was too late to stop my mother phoning the police, which she had done twice to get them to come and remove the carers. I also gave the manageress the phone number of the local community dementia nurse and read out the latest letter from her to my mother’s doctor opining that my mother was not a danger. Clearly circumstances had superseded the latter somewhat. After a long and interesting afternoon the manageress did mange to talk my mother down and they all ended up having tea and cake.
I am grateful on so many levels. I am beyond glad that I instituted tea and cake. It fulfills the same function as a bedtime story to a fractious toddler. It signals that the crisis is over and all is well. I am glad I had locks put on a couple of the bedroom doors for the safety of carers if necessary. I am glad the carers were up to it, that gives me confidence for the future. I am glad that my mother is not in some nameless home where violence towards my mother happened without my knowledge, I am glad I was involved and could see for myself how gentle the outcome was.
I am however, quite surprised. The verbal aggression of which the carers complain so bitterly has never been more than my mother’s routine utterances to me. She isn’t saying things to them that she hasn’t said to me a thousand times and long before she became demented. Heck she hasn’t even locked them up and starved them!
Yesterday the manageress rang to say she had made an appointment with the doctor for tomorrow when we go so that the manageress, myself and my mother’s doctor can together enact an official instrument that will allow the care team access to my mother’s house even when she doesn’t want them to be there. It will probably be helpful to wave at the police and anyone else official that my mother tries to summon by phone.
The second in command was right. It isn’t getting easier. I did write two and a half years ago at the very beginning of these diaries that caring for a family member with dementia is like steering an unsteady sled across the frozen wastes to deliver the sick and dying cargo into the empty grave. Currently the wolves are howling, the blizzard is just getting going and the pine forest on either side of the track looks dark and forbidding. And there’s a sword in the sled. But the cargo is wrapped up warmly, the blankets are soft and fluffy and I will not lose my nerve.
I’ll let you know what happens at the doctors and all about the official instrument towards the end of the week, wolves permitting.
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JaneLaverick.com – slightly challenged dear.