Keen readers (and I know you are one) (thank you) (otherwise, you know, there’d be no point) may have noticed the lack of postings recently. It has taken me an entire week to recover from the 29 hour shift I did in sole charge of my mother over Christmas. It was dire.
Right up until the last minute she kept wishing loudly and repeatedly that she would die. This put the cramp you would expect on any joyous anticipation of the day. As I fully anticipated any turkey basting, potato peeling and so on was regularly interrupted by demands for fresh water, heated slippers and so on. I spent most of the day actually running between rooms.
Things had not started well the previous night. One of the carers was off sick, they had found a substitute who said that my mother had been difficult and not eaten lunch and so had not had her medication. This has been a recent development. On several occasions my mother has decided not to get up, therefore has not had her breakfast and the majority of her medication which she takes with breakfast. I believe the carers are making a rod for their own backs when they allow my mother to omit medication. A previous carer who had left for a new job kindly returned to wish my mother season’s greetings, once we located the present I had set aside for her, which my mother had helpfully hidden in the cupboard under the stairs and wished her well, we were on to tea. This was a meal which I knew my mother would love. I had provided smoked salmon, lobster and prawns. Wildly luxurious yes, but why not if it is to be her last Christmas eve supper? So I dished this all up complete with champagne, brown bread and lemons so fresh they still had leaves on them. But my mother was tired because of the visit of the previous carer, fractious because she hadn’t had lunch and was past her hunger and out of sorts because she hadn’t had her medication. So instead of attacking it with vigour, she sat moaning and bonking her head on her tea plate. Such a help. I remained cheerful, the OT poured the champagne. It was not the pink Cava that I had sent with the order, I couldn’t find that, (it turned up at the end of the visit at the back of the fridge,) it was one out of the cupboard that sojourned briefly in the freezer. One of the advantages of being a family member and having dealt with dementia previously and having two Christmases for my mother under my belt was that I wavered not one whit over the champagne. He poured it, I administered it. Half a glass in she began to cheer up a bit. As Leslie Caron nearly sang ‘The Night They Invented Champagne, it Cheered up the Demented, Who were Glad it was Invented.’ And so was I. Nevertheless I ended up hand feeding my mother. Have you ever done aeroplanes to a demented person with a lobster claw on the end of the fork whilst you go ‘Come along, just one little claw, look this lobster is waving its little claw at you, oh it looks so tasty………….’ After a small amount of food the patient did begin to cheer up a bit and eat for herself. By the end of the second glass of champagne she was getting loquacious and demanding more, so the OT went to put another bottle in the freezer, of which more later. Meanwhile I gave my mother the rest of my glass, got her back in the lounge in her chair and got the telly on so I could clear up.
Bed time was a trial, I did the milky drink all wrong and not hot enough and too many hot water bottles in all the wrong places. She managed to clean her teeth and was fulsomely praised and after several false starts settled for the night.
She did, thank goodness, sleep the night. I wish I had. The guest bedroom is right over the central heating pipes. We opened the window and slept on top of the beds and were still gently roasted and unable to breathe. At seven, thanks to two alarms, I sprang from my sweaty bed, checked the cat was still alive and took my mother a cup of the wrong colour tea so she could get up slowly. I then had to call the OT to turn on the shower, which, after the time it leaked on the dining room ceiling, had apparently never been used and had seized up. With a great deal of swearing and muscle he instituted a feeble cold trickle, so I got showered, dressed, made up and ready to help my mother at a great rate of knots.
Breakfast was two toasted brioche, which she buttered all over as usual, and after her full complement of pills and several cups of tea, she was returning to reasonable and able to open her presents. I had left those for the OT at home but he had taken mine which was a battery operated nail buffer doodah, that I’d asked for and I am typing this with really shiny nails, which is nice. I had a lot of presents for my mother, A William Morris cardigan and two plain tops to go under, posh hand cream, a book, a pictorial calendar with a different picture every day of scenes from all over Britain, assorted special chocolates, a tea towel, two bone china mugs and various other things. And there were presents from other people and they were all tins of biscuits. I know demented people are demented and difficult and when you go they eat biscuits but there really is no excuse for just buying them a tin of the type of biscuits they offer you when you go there. Thank goodness her memory is not good, she’ll just know people gave presents.
Dinner was very much better than the previous meal as all the medication and meals had been taken on time. There was a slight hiatus when she insisted eleven times that the Christmas table cloth had to be found and put on. I did and it was and the OT and I even dragged the entire set table on its walking rug back to where it should be, in the room instead of up the wall. I was not even phased when the OT found the exploded bottle from the night before in the freezer and began unloading the entire person-height freezer all over the kitchen while I was making the Christmas dinner and looking after the complainer. Helpful.
But dinner was good, she asked for extras and I was even let off forgetting the bread sauce. (A thing I have never eaten, bread is bread and sauce is sauce, the two should not be confused in my opinion.) All was praised slightly and then she had to be praised fulsomely and often for eating her dinner. ‘Didn’t you do well, oh didn’t you do well. How clever you are, what a triumph, yes two lots of turkey, count them, one two, how fantastic, oh yes that’s made my day I shall tell everyone, yes I shall, didn’t you do well etc etc etc.’
The afternoon was got through by the resting with the Queen on telly and by the working with the need to leave the kitchen as if a Christmas lunch had never been cooked there and everything put away. And I did it. By teatime the kitchen was spotless. Over the next few hours we sneeked our suitcase downstairs and waited for the carer to arrive. By then I was so tired. The patient was getting nasty. She refused to watch anything but what she wanted so I found myself being forced to watch a forty year old episode of Dad’s Army and being told off every minute for not laughing. No doubt about it, familiarity was breeding contempt. When the carer arrived, a bit early, God bless her little cotton socks, we leapt upon her like drowning people on a life raft and left as soon as we could.
The Dalai Lama would have been proud of me, I used 29 hours of extreme provocation to sharpen up my compassion and be as kind as I could be. Driving home on Christmas night someone was looking after us, the roads were clear and dry but in every bit where the OT would have frightened me by speeding there was a car in front proceeding cautiously. And we arrived safely and the S&H’s cats were thrilled to see us and the OT went to the pub which was open for addicts and regulars on a bring-your-own basis and I scanned the Internet until he returned at eleven and we went to our pits and we slept and we slept and we slept.
A week later I feel as if I am getting back to normal. I have a fresh appreciation of all the carers can do. I have received a wonderful gift myself which is the old fashioned satisfaction of knowing under difficult circumstances that you have done your duty as well as you could and gladly.
I wish us all, and me, a very much better new year. All my horoscope sites are telling me that 2015 will be much easier, I hope they are right.
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JaneLaverick.com By their fruits you shall know them….. also by their stuffing and roasties.