Hard Times.

So…as of the 1st December this year I have been here 1 year caring for Mum. Will came out at the end of February to help out and thank goodness he did because there is no way I could have coped otherwise.

We have had a difficult few weeks recently. Mum started to be a bit uncomfortable, complaining of an ache in her back but it got slowly worse and ended up with an awful day for Mum and my sister, who was up giving us a break. Mum was suddenly in agony and it being a Saturday it was not the best time to get a doctor out. My sister rang for an ambulance but they did not deem it priority so said they wouldn’t be sending one. A doctor said he would come when he could. It took 6 hours for him to get there and he said she needed to go to hospital for a scan but that the ambulance might take up to 2 hours to get there. It took 5! From when my sister rang for help initially it took 12 hours to get Mum to hospital.

She had the scan and it turned out she had a compression fracture of the lower spine. We couldn’t understand how it had happened. Mum had had no falls this last year. It turns out it can happen in the elderly just from sitting as their bones are old and weaker. The scan showed that she had had a previous fracture that had healed. Mum had suffered some back pain a few years ago for a while, so it could have been then but no one discovered that then.

Mum was admitted to hospital and so began the efforts to try and deal with her pain. They started with intravenous morphine but Mum nearly overdosed and they had to give her something to counteract that. The pain came and went but when it came it was awful and Mum would be screaming in agony. On one visit we were there 3 and a half hours with Mum in pain. I caused a scene while the nurses were doing their change over meetings by wading in and shouting “My Mum is in pain. Can somebody please help her! What would you do if it were your Mum!”

I thought I was going to be restrained and marched out but they gave her paracetemol….no effect. They gave her Codeine….no effect and finally they gave her oxycodone, an oral morphine based drug and that has helped. That is what she is still on now.

Mum was in two wards in the hospital, the first was the acute ward then she was moved to a quieter ward but just as depressing. Visiting her was stressful as we didn’t know what we were going to find when we got there, praying that we would find her comfortable and not in pain. There was another lovely old lady in the same room who was continually praying to die. There had been times too when Mum had wished the same.

From the hospital they moved Mum to a residential care home for interim rehab before coming back home. There she had her own ensuite room but we would go and find her asleep in a chair. She was in 4 days and I spoke to an OT and said she could be sitting in a chair at home rather than here. They agreed.

She came home yesterday.

I rang the carers who have been coming daily for personal care in the morning to say Mum was coming home and was told that she had been ‘terminated’ as she had been in hospital for more than two weeks. It turns out they don’t even have to inform you that they are terminating their service either. I have had to phone social services and arrange new care which thankfully starts tomorrow.

So that is what has been keeping us busy since I was last able to post anything and no doubt will keep us busy in the days to come. I have some pictures of a trip to London and another to Glasgow to post when I get a chance.