Yesterday was a good day despite Maureen being tired after her evening with Clarice: she said her aunty never stopped talking while I was out watching the Sky Blues on T V.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised as her uncle Dennis and I often used to say ‘listen to them they are like a couple of teenagers when they get together’.  Despite needing plenty of rest she responded well to the new regime.

Early on I thought my new plans were doomed to failure when I asked her to stir the porridge.  She did it begrudgingly: grumbling about it being my job.  Then she announced that she had never liked porridge and said she didn’t want any.  One of the things I have learned is that ‘no’ often means ‘not now’, and a few minutes later she was at the table with spoon in hand.

Maureen was eager to help with the preparation of a very late lunch.  She worked well peeling and chopping vegetables with minimal help.  We were both delighted with the meal and my raspberry surprise for sweet hit the spot.  I knew I’d be onto a winner with using her favourite fruit.

As dusk set in I suggested a late shopping expedition into Cleethorpes.  Once again I turned a ‘no’ into a yes persuading her that we would be able to park right outside the Frozen Food shop.  Once inside I knew I had backed a winner as we came across an old face that Maureen is particularly fond of.  Lisa was lovely with Maureen and kept her arm around her as they chatted on the banks of the freezers.  I am pretty sure Lisa’s speech difficulties bring back happy memories of one of Maureen’s aunties who was deaf and dumb.

I am not intending to get carried away with the positive signs from yesterday: one swallow does not make a summer.  It’s a case once again of Maureen’s advice of ‘slowly, slowly catchee monkey’ and if I keep my nerve our journey might become a little brighter than it has been for a while.

As night followed day I got a stark reminder that Mrs Dementia is never far away.  Maureen appeared at the top of the stairs at 11.15pm as I sat at the keyboard.   She had woken from napping on the sofa and was worried that she is late for school or some other appointment.  I did my best to reassure her that it is Saturday night and she hasn’t missed anything.  Mrs Dementia is struggling to make sense of her world and stared at me in disbelief – I don’t think she knew who I was.

My efforts to persuade Mrs Dementia that it is time for bed fail.   She is very unpleasant and dismissive of any of my suggestion to help.  She decided to spend the night on the sofa: I eventually left her to it and bedded down in the spare room.    As I finish this post I have no idea if I’ll be dealing with Maureen, or Mrs Dementia, when the woman in our lounge eventually rises from the sofa.

I’m an armchair supporter of the Sky Blues these days.  To be perfectly honest I wouldn’t pay to watch professional footballers as they are overpaid Prima Donnas.  Coventry City are on featured Sky One tonight playing Peterborough and it is a rare chance to see my team in action.  Unfortunately, we don’t have that channel on our T V so I need to find a local venue where I can watch the match

Maureen remains tired and confused today.  It wouldn’t be safe to leave her to her own devices for a couple of hours this evening.  Fortunately,  Clarice has agreed to come round and sit with her while I go out.  I will make it a fait accompli; collect Clarice and bring her round.  If I gave Maureen the choice she would say that she is quite safe to be left on her own: those days have gone!

I have had to keep my eye on Maureen’s use of the electric kettle for some time.  She often fills it and up leaves the lid open when she switches it on. This morning I smelled burning plastic when she put the kettle on a hot ring of the electric cooker. I managed to rescue the kettle just in time with only superficial damage to the plastic casing .  Maureen didn’t see anything wrong in what she had done, clearly remembering how she used to boil water in times gone by.

The need for vigilance is paramount if a serious incident is to be avoided in the future.  Leaving Maureen alone in the house is now very risky and has to be called into question.  Unfortunately, our Care Agency are struggling to put additional sits in place as they are short of staff.  This means that I’m going to be confined to quarters for four days a week for the forseeable future.  In the mean time I will need to keep my wits about me at all times to minimise the chances of a serious accident.  I think it is time to call in Occupational Therapy to see if we can make the house safer for someone who is forgetting the safest way to use various things in the house.  The Fire Brigade are already wanting to pay us a visit to minimise the risks of accidents in the home.

When I was a machinist in the car industry I avoided night-shift like the plague. Fortunately, my mate on the opposite shift loved working night’s so I only ever did a total of a couple of months in my 8 year stint machining crankshafts.  Now I’m on duty 24/7 with an endless hours’ contract: when duty calls I have to deliver.

At around 1.30 this morning I heard Maureen on the move.  I joined her downstairs to find her looking out of the window.  She was concerned that the car was about to be stolen:  even my reassurance that it was quite safe made little difference.  She was convinced there were children and a dog in her vehicle.

Almost an hour later I’m hoping that she is bedded down on the sofa and this will allow me to be on standby for a few hours.  It’s unlikely I will risk going back to bed because if she could wake and panic because she is unsure where she is..  What I intend to do is tidy up for a while and then doze in an armchair close to the sofa.  I didn’t need to do that after all as Maureen decided that it was too cold to stay downstairs and went back to bed.  She’s been sleeping like a log for a couple of hours now.  A couple of hours later I went back to bed and have just woken after some more welcome rest

I hope to be able to talk things over with our G P today.  It is difficult to consider sleep after some of Maureen’s latest antics.  However, I need to develop a strategy to let events wash over me, as I do when she launches into a verbal attack. I need to take a leaf out of Maureen’s book and fall asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow.  If I don’t begin to do this soon I’m going to be in real trouble and that is something neither of us can afford.

It’s 10 pm and I’m blogging to help me cope with the events of the last half an hour.  As Maureen completed her preparations to go to bed I heard her sobbing in the bathroom.  I went to console her and she said she ‘didn’t like sleeping by herself and haven’t I got a sister’.  It took me a while to settle her before she told me she wanted the bedroom to herself.  As I was about to close her bedroom door she said ‘who are you?’

I have no problem accepting that Maureen doesn’t know who I am at various times in the day.  My role is to minimise her distress and help her to feel safe.  However, I’m glad I’ll be able to watch a bit of footie on T V for a while as sleep doesn’t come easy when you see someone you love so upset.  It wouldn’t be so bad if I could do what comes naturally in such situations but any form of physical contact is risky when dementia is rampant with Maureen’s history.