As it’s my birthday today I decided to stick with one of our rituals by giving Maureen one of my favourite cards to regive to me:
Dementia: Practising Patience and Acceptance
When I returned home from my Buddhist Meditation Class last night Maureen gave me short shrift. If looks could kill I would not be Blogging this morning. How fortunate that Neil had been teaching on the delusion of anger and the importance of patience: he couldn’t have chosen a more relevant topic!
There is no point in getting angry that dementia is a constant in our lives: nothing good ever comes from such a delusion. The Buddhist message from last night is to accept what comes your way as karmic seeds ripening and then decide if there is anything you can do about it. I eventually decided that there was little I could do about Maureen’s focus last night: nothing seemed to shift her from my shortcomings. In the end, I made sure she was safe, went to bed and left her to rant.
This morning Maureen has been obsessed with looking for her friend to accompany her to the cinema. It took ages to shift her reality with music once again opening the door to a change in focus. Once I called up one or two of her favourites on YouTube her presentation temporarily became a little more favourable. Unfortunately, she is currently struggling to know who I am and wants to go home.
Girl Thursday will be here in a couple of hours and that will give me a chance to progress some things I can do something about. I need to urgently sort out my next Respite Break: patience is not easily accessible when you are worn out!
Footnote: As much as we loved having a baby in the house yesterday we have decided we don’t want any more additions to our family. As I’m 72 tomorrow we have decided it is sensible to call it a day on that front!
Dementia: Sing A Song
Maureen has been in great voice this morning, singing this one:
It was lovely to see the joy on her face as she remembered the words of the Carpenters songs when I called their music up on YouTube. Music is so important in our lives. How reassuring it must be to be able to sing along to your old favourites; being able to remember the words when you feel that your memory about most things is so poor.
I have a surprise in store for Maureen this afternoon. A carer who is on maternity leave is calling around with her little one. It will be interesting to see how Maureen reacts to seeing someone who was here almost daily for a couple of years. My guess is she will have that baby in her arms within minutes of her being in the house!
The Carpenters were a welcome relief from a familiar song. If I followed Maureen’s theme of an hour ago it would be with the Beach Boys ‘I Want To Go Home’: she doesn’t sing that one she howls it in floods of tears. I’ve tried to shift her thinking by singing ‘I Like A Nice Cup of Tea In The Morning’ and delivering her morning tipple. If things go well this afternoon I might add ‘Baby Come Back’ to my repertoire!
Dementia: ‘Where’s My Dad?’
Maureen woke several times during the night in distress. I spooked her after a toilet break when she let out a deafening scream fearing someone had come out of the cupboard to attack her. A little later, she was concerned about the whereabouts of her mum. A short while afterward she was complaining that they were wanting her to sleep with horses. Then she was crying for her dad so I sang her a song he used to sing for her:
On Friday I bit the bullet and cancelled our forthcoming trip to Thoresby Hall to celebrate my birthday. After a lot of consideration, I decided it would be unkind to subject her to a long car journey and three days in a strange place. Perhaps, the time has arrived to find a way of celebrating every day!
Dementia: Be Wary!
Lorrie B warns us in her latest BLOG that Big Pharma is preparing to market the latest treatments for dementia. Her advice is to be wary!
Dementia: Transforming Adverse Conditions
There are many times during the day and night when I feel exhausted with the constant struggle to know how to deal with aspects of Maureen’s presentation. Listening to the teachings of Dekyong; particularly the one above always help my motivation to seek new ways to support my dear wife. I’m really grateful that we now have a carer on Wednesday evenings so that I can attend meditation classes in Grimsby. I am also about to book another few restorative days at Madhyamaka Buddhist Centre early in March.
The visualization of the sign at the entrance to Madhyamaka helps me to cope in the middle of the night when Maureen wakes up distressed wanting her mum.
Dementia: Happy Valentine’s Day
As you will see Maureen was delighted with her Valentine’s Day present this morning:
Seeing the joy on her face this morning has persuaded me to go ahead with my birthday plans for next week. I have had a chat with Thoresby Hall and they assure me they will do all they can to support us during our stay. Positive risk-taking remains the way forward here we will never subscribe to ‘Prescribed Disengagement’.
N.B. I hope my editing of the photograph has shared Maureen’s joy without compromising her independence.
Dementia: Wanting To Go Home
Maureen woke early this morning crying that she wanted to go home. She said that she felt useless here and could cope with anything when she lived at home with her parents. I’m going to see if following Bob DeMarco’s advice eases her distress:
Dementia: What A Disgrace
The National Audit Office Report on the state of adult social care is 55 pages long. It tells us nothing new. Anyone working in the sector or in receipt of care could have confirmed the damning conclusions quoted below:
‘The one and a half million people working in adult social care in England provide essential support to adults with care needs, yet the care sector is undervalued and its workers poorly rewarded. Providers are having increasing difficulty recruiting and retaining workers, and the number of individuals with some level of unmet care needs is increasing. Despite these highly visible challenges, the Department does not have a current workforce strategy and key commitments it has made to both enhance training and career development and tackle recruitment and retention challenges have not been followed through. There is no evidence that the Department is exercising oversight over
local authorities and local health and care partnerships for their responsibilities relating to the adult social care workforce. As a result, the actions taken by the Department in its oversight role have not demonstrably improved the sustainability of the workforce and so have not achieved value for money. The Department needs to address this
challenge urgently and give the care workforce the attention it requires so that the sector has the right people to provide consistently safe and high-quality care.’
Dementia: ‘Don’t Get Old!’
The following article is reproduced with the kind permission of the author:
Dynamite…
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News and Comment from Roy Lilley
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There are whizz-bangs, fireworks, explosions, detonations and blowing-up.
Yesterday’s report, from the National Audit Office was a boom, bang and blowing-apart of social care policy.
I don’t think I have seen such an excoriating dissection of policy, ever. Here are some extracts:
The DH have made a response to all this but it is so puerile, I can’t be bothered with it.
In a move, the day preceding the publication of the report, Communities Secretary, Savid Javid gave local authorities a £150m bung for next year.
All this against the background of Northampton Council, if it were a business, would be on the edge of doing a Carillion and ten other councils up to their necks in irrecoverable debt.
What does this mean? Well, there is an annual social care funding gap of about £2.3bn. Unlike the NHS, local authorities must balance their books each year. They cannot carry forward a deficit.
A fairer-funding review is on the way. A green paper on the future of funding adult social care has been pulled from the Treasury and given to a Minister in the DH.
Local government is skint.
The knock on effect; to make savings councils have changed their eligibility criteria for receiving adult social care, consequently the number getting care has dropped by a quarter. After 2014, the way the data was collected has changed, now no one knows what’s going on.
It’s probably fair to say about 900,000 elderly frail people, in receipt of no care whatever, are refugees in our own system.
And, the NHS is propping up social care. Central government funding for councils was cut by a third during the last Parliament. Of the £16bn LAs spend on adult social care, £2bn came from the NHS.
So, from what I can discover those are the facts. The ugly, stripped-pine facts. Facts of neglect, nonchalance, unconcern and a cavalier disregard from a blasé government which neither we nor the older people in our society deserve.
I don’t know what to say… this government is drifting, it is losing the intellectual high ground, it is not facing up to the big challenges.
It looks to me like government has given up on its people….
It is shelving problems, delaying answers and procrastinating. We are watching the infrastructure of care crumble away.
On June 7th 1983, in the back of a car on the way to a speech in Bridgend, Neil Kinnock scribbled some notes.
His voice hoarse from campaigning he delivered the speech of his life.
He concluded with;
‘I warn you not to be ordinary, not to be young, not to fall ill… I warn you, not to get old.’
… dynamite.
Have a thoughtful weekend.
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Neuropathy Nightmare 