Just back after three weeks sorting out my Mum. A panic phone call from her saying that she hadn't eaten since Boxing Day (untrue) and that things were bad saw me on the early plane to Jersey the following morning.
She seemed fine although her short-term memory is going and although she had been eating, she wasn't eating enough which of course messes up the brain. And as she can't remember the chaos surrounding her pills was undescribable - it seems that she would take A Pill at odd times of the day, not take the right ones and I even found the cats' worming tablets in the stash!
So I knuckled down and shopped and cooked and drove her around for three weeks; after a week she was much better, her mind was clearer and she didn't pay her daily twice in one day and she was eating. I sorted out the pill confusion and after a visit from the doctor managed to get more efficient pills. Told her she must get a daily dose pill box, as did the doctor, and that was when the trouble started. She point blankly refused to use it saying that she prefers to take the pills directly from the box. Why?
So just to annoy me she started 'forgetting' to take the pills I put out for her or hiding them. I made out a list of her pills so that I could remember what was what, and she threw it away. She cancelled her appointment for an endoscopy at the hospital without telling me and it was only when I rang the specialist that his secretary told me what she had done. So I rebooked it and actually got an appointment a week earlier than originally planned, so short-circuited that trick. The endoscopy was good, there is no cancer or anything else, just a slight inflammation. Mum got cross as the specialist said there was no reason to give her antibiotics. We get home and she comes down from her bedroom with 4 different types of anitbiotics and says 'Which one shall I take?'. Goodness knows where she had been hiding them. So we almost come to blows as I confiscate them.
So a difficult three weeks with me getting her to eat again properly, driving her around, taking the cat to the vet (as she couldn't get antibiotics, the cat had a jab of them - don't ask!) and generally just jollying her along, getting her out and about and seeing her friends again and frankly just wishing I was at home in Dorset.
And then one night towards the end of my stay I went up to bed and went to see if Mum was okay. Normally she is either reading or watching the television - that evening she was sitting there doing neither with the saddest expression on her face. She didn't see me and I went to bed thinking what a bitch I was complaining about her all the time.
My grandmother was a very selfish and demanding woman and with Mum we used to joke and she would say 'If ever I get like my mother, have me put down!'. She is like her mother, I won't have her 'put down' but I fear for my future!
