Breakthrough with Mum today! She agreed that when I fly over to visit later this month, it would be a good idea for me to make phone calls on her behalf to help organise helpful services, if possible.
Previously, she’s been very resistant to me even doing this much. I’m so happy.

#AgeingParents

Just got absolutely destroyed by opening a book and finding a letter my Dad wrote shortly after the family suddenly found out about my Grandpa Bert’s dementia, when my Grandmother died in 1997.

She’d been covering for Grandpa Bert for a long time.

The letter very sensibly says Dad doesn’t want to leave us in that sort of mess, and sets out some funeral instructions.

Which are almost what he asked for when I spent most of a week helping Mum and Dad write their Advanced Care Plans in 2019. Except he’d forgotten the songs he loved and asked for in the 1997 letter.

Now Dad has dementia, and my heart is broken. The hardest sentence was “I could just get old and change from being difficult to manage to impossible.”

Oh, Dad.

#Dementia #DementiaSux #Mum
#Dad #AdvancedCarePlanning #AdvancedCarePlan #AgeingParents

Also, poor Mum, after I phoned her yesterday about the hallucinogenic spinach issue, threw out the bag of salad leaves she had in the fridge, even though it was mixed lettuce, not the same use by dates, and they’d been eating it this week with no ill effects.

#AgeingParents #BadSpinach #spinach #OhMum

Phone call with Mum in Adelaide today - just Mum, Dad was asleep.

It was one of Dad’s bad days. He had an appointment with the cardiologist this morning to check his pacemaker, and so he was agitated yesterday, and “didn’t sleep a wink” last night.

Mum told me the Uber driver commented on the way home, “You wait for half an hour, see them for five minutes, pay them two hundred dollars, and that’s it!”

Well, yes. But I’m very grateful that the pacemaker is doing what it’s supposed to.

But for Mum - it’s exhausting. When Dad is okay, he just gets a bit confused about things. But when he’s anxious about his routine being changed, and this week has had three appointments to break his routine - he’s not so happy. She says he doesn’t intend to be any trouble. But I can hear the strain it’s causing her.

I imagine it must be like being a widow, while your husband is still living with you.

#dementia #AgeingParents

Had a chance to speak with Mum in Adelaide by herself today.

As soon as she called, I could hear her voice was small and shaky, upset.

“Oh, Mum, what’s happened?”

“It’s your father. He lost a filling on Sunday night. He wanted to drive to the dentist at eight thirty yesterday morning and wait, I had to explain that wasn’t how dentists work. I managed to get him in this morning, but he’s been so anxious all yesterday and today, he’s so upset and tired with the break in routine.”

“Oh, Mum, I’m so sorry. Is he resting now?”

“I’m n the back bedroom so he couldn’t hear the phone, he’s asleep. He has his good days, but it’s so exhausting on his bad days.”

“And the geriatrician?”

“Oh, he’s memorised the answers to the geriatrician ‘s questions. He knows what he’s going to ask.”

I feel so helpless. Mum can’t leave their big house,mit would disrupt Dad even further. And she has to keep going until the next assessment in April.

#dementia #Adelaide #Mum #Dad #Ageing #AgeingParents