Yesterday I shared my aspirations to make a Fresh Start and this drew some helpful advice from a number of quarters.  Trying to persuade Maureen to go to a Day Centre is important if I’m to regain a life of my own.  It’s not going to be a simple matter and I was very grateful to receive this advice, via LinkedIn, from Anne Kingsbury yesterday:

‘I work in a Day Centre and we often struggle to get people to accept respite. So many people trying to do it alone or with only a few in-home services. I just want to say as someone bringing in loved ones to a new environment “stay with it!”. It takes time for new connections and routines to be established. You and the Day Centre will become partners I hope. Remember if they ring you with feedback or questions try not to hear this as them complaining – they are trying to build the whole picture and get more clues to what is happening for Maureen so that they can better serve her (and you). Wishing you all the best’.

I spent time yesterday in discussions with the Manager and a Senior Carer at Royal Court Care Home preparing the ground for Maureen’s initial visit.  They are a very well organised outfit and I continue to be impressed by their professional approach.  Royal Court is clearly dementia friendly and offers a real prospect of meeting Maureen’s needs and helping me to gain much needed respite from my caring role.

Following my request Gary is now my social worker and our ‘Working Position’ is to ease Maureen into Royal Court next Tuesday.  We have decided that Charlotte our regular Carer will attempt to cajole Maureen to ‘dip her foot into the water’ as close to 10.30 am as possible and I will pick her up at 5 pm.  If all goes well we will use the same arrangements on Thursday.

We are all aware that Maureen may resist any attempt to move her from her home: hence I have postponed any attempt to visit family in Coventry next week.  Yesterday she ‘played hell into me’ for going out and leaving her with a Carer.  Once again she returned to a familiar theme of married couples doing things together rather than one or the other going out alone.  Yesterday evening and early this morning Maureen’s mood is particularly low and she sees living here as the cause of all her discomfort including: having no friends; a persistant sore mouth; people stealing her clothes and lots of things smelling.  

As always I have a number of strategies up my sleeve to try to elevate Maureen’s low mood.  I have no doubt that Good Music will give her a lift and her favourites will be on the next time she wakes.  I have also printed a To Do List on a whiteboard so that we don’t let depression lead us down a road of not being able to do anything.  I persuaded Maureen to have a shower and wash her hair yesterday – a trim and a bit of colour can only help to lift her spirits if I can move her in the direction of Mark her hairdresser this morning.

Edit: It looks like it’s going to be a rough one: a polo neck sweater has been thrown on the floor and Maureen is currently sitting in her underwear ‘up top’ and that is too tight!.  Tea has been poured into the sugar bowl and spat out as too cold with the thought that someone had left it there and perhaps a tramp would like it.

Thank goodness Gail will be here in a couple of hours and I can have a break from watching such a sad scene unfold.

I am drafting this post at 11pm in the hope that Maureen will come to bed shortly and not interrupt me when I am in deep sleep. It became apparent during a late evening walk that she was unsure who I was when she asked me ‘if I had any children’.  She also said that sometimes she thought ‘I was here to help her get her memory back’.   It also became clear as we were homeward bound that she thought we had never been on Thorpe Park before despite many walks around the holiday camp.  In fact we took a similar route home on Friday morning.

She became very withdrawn a short while ago when sorting through some washing that our carer had ironed this morning.  She said that ‘n0-one had told her where to put her clothes once they had been ironed’ and referred to an incident a couple of weeks ago when she had felt humiliated by the insensitive behaviour of a carer who doesn’t normally darken our door.

I have now beefed up our security after the scare on Sunday morning.  The patio door has been made more difficult to open from the inside after a bit of DIY.   Both bolts are now operational on the back gates so that is another escape route that may have been closed off. In addition a warning bell now sounds when the front door is opened.

The other positive that happened today was that Maureen pressed the button on the baby alarm to get my attention.  I’m not sure she knew what she was doing but I remain optimistic on this front.

 Until this evening Maureen had hardly been out of the house for the last three days.  She has accompanied me on short car journeys to the shops but has generally been reluctant to go out for a walk.  Whenever I have suggested going out she has said she is too tired and has been sleeping for large parts of the day and evening.  She often says that her leg hurts or she has nothing suitable to go out in.  

There is no carer sit tomorrow due to a misunderstanding about my need to have some time to myself.  This may provide an opportunity to try something different in an effort to help Maureen enjoy the day.  She often says she is concerned that she is spending her life in bed or on the sofa: I’ll do my best to move her in a different direction tomorrow.

I am a little worried about leaving her alone downstairs, even with the baby monitor activated.  The back door key is missing and is likely to be in her pocket so she could get outside.   If she wakes and feels she is locked in goodness knows what might happen.  The safest option may be to kip on an armchair for a while: thank goodness it is possible to flick a lever and make them horizontal.  I can’t think of any other way to keep her safe and sound tonight.

Maureen was up to her tricks again yesterday playing a dastardly prank on me after lunch.  I had drifted off in the armchair as I waited for my pudding to cool.  When I awoke I couldn’t find it anywhere and Maureen was in fits of laughter.  Despite my suspicions she denied any involvement and I had to seek additional supplies from leftovers in the kitchen.

As I washed up in the evening I counted the dishes and realised that we were one short. Putting my helmet and uniform on P C 70 returned to the scene of the crime for further investigations and located the missing sweet: stashed safely beneath the coffee table.  Maureen would have convinced anyone of her innocence by then because four hours later she had forgotten her ‘crime’.

It is lovely when the ‘scallywag’ is here playing pranks on me as she often has throughout our relationship.   Her antics followed a good morning with Charlotte, who had held the fort while I went out shopping.  Maureen likes the ‘new kid on the block’ as she has a wide range of conversation and chatting about her forthcoming holiday in Mexico had gone down well.

The ‘scallywag’ also enjoyed her afternoon walk even though she would have picked up I was on her case.  I steered her in the direction of the chemist for a possible blood pressure check.  Her response of ‘I had it checked a couple of weeks ago and I don’t want to focus on it all the time’ was refreshing.  Then as we wound our way home I built in my own ‘capacity assessment’ to check on her recollection of the Green Cross Code and ability to find her way home.  From what I saw yesterday she is safe to wander but needs help to find her way home.  I reckon there is potential for improvement possibly by bringing the digital tracker into use.

The evening went well with a sandwich and some lovely singing along to Barbara Streisand.  By 8 pm Maureen was obviously tiring and declined a joint approach to solving crosswords.  This gave me an opportunity to deal with my addiction to Salvage Hunters on Quest One.  I like to see Drew Pritchard travel around the country and find hidden gems that his team breathe new life into and make a healthy profit into the bargain.  We finished off with YouTube: eventually settling for the brilliance of Victoria Wood in yet another repeat of something or other.

At 9.30 pm we were both tired and made our way to the marital bedroom.  Once in bed we tried something a little different but were clearly not on the same page and I struggled to adapt to a new position.  In retrospect I think the ‘scallywag’ was up to her antics again; trying to claim the right-hand side of the bed which she forfeited early in our relationship.

I made a silly mistake after an early bathroom call and retired to the spare room.  When Maureen awoke around 2.30 am I realised the error of my ways as ‘a stranger was now in her room and a dog was on the landing’.  Although I joined her back in our bed I struggled to get back to sleep and once again have been up for a while.

It will be interesting to see if Maureen returns to her theme of wanting a day out today.  We had a little pillow talk last night before we dropped off and she suggested visiting my mum today or even a couple of days away (just the two of us).  Things are looking up but I clearly need to avoid dropping off or that ‘scallywag’ will be up to her antics again!

Still reeling from the antics of yesterday I nearly forgot my task from Learning The Fundamentals today: to make contact with fellow bloggers.  I currently have over a 100 followers and have received loads of messages of support and suggestions to help us on our journey.  I’d best pop across their and see how many more positive contacts I can make to help us on our way or as the ‘scallywag’ might say ‘oh are oh are shiver me timbers’.

I had to step into my ‘Tea Boy’ mode this morning to get out of a hole I was digging for myself.  Maureen changed the rules of  ‘Musical Beds’   last night by refusing to move from the sofa. This meant that I have had little sleep with one ear tuned to the Baby Monitor all night, listening to her every move, and frequently popping downstairs to check that she is safe. My ‘hole-digging’ started around 4 am when I tried to open discussions about it being sensible to sleep in a bed.

I often forget that dementia means logic, rational thought, and empathy are early casualties of the condition.  My attempts to assert that it is normal to sleep in bed fell on fallow ground with threats to leave if I didn’t want Maureen to live here anymore.  Early morning tea has turned the tide on what became a fruitless discussion with accusations that I was telling Maureen what to do: even treating her like a child.  I simply have to find another way of prising her off the sofa at night and encouraging her to sleep in bed: suggestions as ‘comments’ please – no closing date or prize for a solution only my gratitude.

The good news from yesterday is that Charlotte our new carer made a positive start to becoming part of the team.  She has a lovely nature and Maureen seemed to like our new ‘Shopper Lady’.  I realise it is early days and one false step from myself or Charlotte can easily lead to all sorts of problems in the future.

We didn’t make it to see our friends from the Bowls Club last night but I have flagged up the possibility of catching up on some familiar faces from Social Dancing this morning.  I have already been demonstrating that I still have a lock-step in my quick step repertoire so with luck we’ll be ‘tripping the light fantastic’ at Clee Church Hall before noon.

I had to be at my best to deal with Mrs Angry yesterday.  As I was in the firing line I had to absorb her anger for quite some time.  Thankfully our social worker came on the phone and Maureen gave her it with ‘both barrels’.  I realised that Maureen needed time to deal with her disappointment in us all conspiring to dump her at a ‘Mental Home’.   She had also been given a message that she was no longer fit to be my Head Nurse.  A phrase from Little Britain sums it all up: ‘How very dare you?’

Late in the afternoon I made the best of a lucky break and followed Maureen as she stormed off for a walk.  I remained at a distance for about a mile, and caught her up to be greeted with: ‘what are you doing here?’  I blagged it for a while using my version of compassionate communication ;  thanking her for encouraging me to get some fresh air.  As we neared home the atmosphere warmed up a little as I steered her to our house.

Once inside I moved into my Chef mode, discussing options for the evening meal.  I then smoothly introduced an aperitif of whisky, ginger wine, and ginger ale which was well received – a couple in fact.  With the food on the go I used YouTube to revisit some of Maureen’s favourite numbers.  Dinner went like a dream with yet another Signature Sweet.  The final course was vinyl again with Rita Cooledge on the deck: my Songbird in great voice.

As eight o clock arrived Maureen declared she was tired after a busy day.  I am not surprised as the emotional drain on her from the ‘Mental Home’ must have meant she was running on empty.  It didn’t take much to help her with her night-time routines.  I think she was fast on well before nine.

As Matt used to say on TV: ‘How very dare you!’.