Back from 4 days at my parents. Been a struggle to keep things together but finally appealed to my brother's head and he agreed that dad needs to go into a nursing home. I think he really wanted him home but the daily routine I've seen would stretch Job's patience and yo couldn't ask my mum to do these things 24 hours a day. Certainly the staff told me that there wasn't going to be an infinite number of resources thrown at a situation where my dad would go home. The sheer logistics would be too demanding and the need for registered nursing care etc would become too much.
Having then spent over 2 hours in a meeting about funding and hopefully hearing that it is going forward for consideration and that it should be granted was good and with agreement from my brother and re-assuring myself that my mum didn't feel that she was pressurised one way or the other by my views, my brothers or those of the specialist we arrived at the point of telling dad. I was all prepared to tell him but mum, bless her went straight to it without waiting for the Social Worker or the Nurse. I like the social worker, he has been very fair and very straight with us and I had a chat with him and he agreed to turn up today. He also spoke to dad and explained the NHS point of view about his treatment and why the next interim step would be the nursing home rather than straight home.
I managed to spend time with dad alone and told him about the meeting we had had and why medically it was difficult for him to come home. I was very matter of fact and took each of the conditions he has now and explained why it wasn't possible to do these at the house. I also drew his attention to the noisy environment that he was in now and the relative peace of where he would go also that mum would have more access (I made him laugh saying I wasn't sure if that was a benefit or not).
Mum was pretty distraught as we left but deep down inside she knew she had done the right thing, the last thing dad needs is her to be ill and she would make herself so trying to look after him at home. The problem would be that we might miss something. We actually didn't earlier on and realised something was wrong with him which ended up with him on Oxygen for 2 days! That's the sort of issue that means he still needs ongoing medical attention, hence the trauma of telling him that he isn't coming home, just yet. Perhaps, he sin't coming home at all and he said that to me. He wondered if he was ever going to get some strength back and not be falling asleep all the time, he thought he would carry on sleeping until he died! Well, I just had to say that I didn't know what the future held but I was certain that it didn't help being where he was now and that we needed to at least make one more positive step towards him coming home which was to get his condition under some level of control.
Of course, it is all pretty upsetting all around. In dad's ward was a guy who was dying and his dad was sat by his side. Bless him the guy looked all in and they were just making him comfortable. For dad they are trying to balance his diabetes which is the problem right now. That is now nearing control but additionally the muscle wastage on his legs is such that he is now bed bound and double incontinent (although if you are quick enough.... he isn't). The trouble is that I watched as his nurse call bell went off for 10 - yes 10 minutes - it then took a further 30 minutes for bed pan to be brought and the whole process to have happened - that's 40 minutes. It took 25 minutes for him to get 4 tablets down his throat as he gets easily distracted (and doesn't like tablets anyway). It's all very hard work and then all of a sudden he is back with you cracking funny jokes. Nurse says "Can I take you blood pressure?" "Sure" he say "as long as you bring it back straight afterwards" He does look sad and vulnerable and of course mum is in bits most of the time. It's been nice to get up there, diffuse the potential family feud that may have brewed with my brother wanting dad home and my mum getting pressure from him. I was saying to the professionals and my mum that frankly what he and I wanted was totally irrelevant anyway it was what is right for my dad and for my mum that's important.
So a long week and lots of things to think about and consider. I was surprised how emotional I got when I saw the young man who is dying with his father. He's a lovely man and no one should really she their child predecease them but he was such a nice man and the nurses too were lovely to him. I went and got a chair for one of the visitors to his bed and spoke to him and felt so upset for his pending loss, just because here he was in that situation. I felt about that for my dad for the first time this week. I hate seeing my mum upset and I've never seen my dad like that - I've seen him distressed but not quite like this and finally I've started to feel the pain of losing him. I think that my brother and my mum will feel it quite powerfully - they have been much closer to him than I have. If I think about it, my dad really hasn't had too much to do with me since I was 19 or 20 and so I've not really had him on hand for 35 or so years. I talk to my mum a fair bit and I suppose my brother and I haven't really been close for well over 20 years now since he reconstructed his life with his new wife. I doubt that will ever be repaired we used to be - well - like brothers ! :-) Now we talk to each other and more so recently. However, on both occasions now that I have been to see my mum and dad - in both cases for 4 days, he hasn't popped around even though he is 5 minutes from the house. Says it all really!
That will do for now.... Tired, need bed and sleep!
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