The Grey Old Man

Quite an Easter Day in Augland! Church full to breaking point... I think we (just) managed to seat everyone, two baptisms, music group supplemented by new members (our teenagers are growing up and, hey, they're musical), almost 200 Easter eggs given away, and a tremendous joy about the place.

Sitting in the midst of this, unable to take it all in, unable to cope with it all, sits a bent, yet compelling, figure. He is old now and confused, his complexion as grey as his hair. Memories of happy Easter Days roll around his mind, when his beloved wife was alive, when he had energy, when he could think clearly. The days before dementia and the Care Home. He is confused at Communion time. He will not, or cannot get up to the communion rail to receive the Risen Christ in the Sacrament, for he is unsure of what is going on. Then his son, for it is my father we're talking of here, brings the Bread to his seat. "The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven", I say, and place it into tired hands. He grips my hand like a vice, wordlessly making contact, trying to articulate this unbreakable bond, between father and son, between Jesus and himself. And in this man, who is in the Good Friday of his life, I hear Jesus Himself, crying out for resurrection.

Dad

Saw dad this afternoon, and although he was as miserable as ever, I couldn't help feeling that he's beginning to settle in to his new(ish) surroundings.

It was even suggested that the problems in the new rectory were due to the curse he had put upon me! Correcting himself, he agreed that he was not that powerful, but he had "powers" which would be passed on to my brother rather than me.

Ah! Well! I can put away the Batman underwear!

Dad Update

Things are not brilliant for now to say the least, and a visit on Sunday was a waste of time as dad refused to speak to me. After all, it's me who has committed him to this dreadful place and me who is responsible for declaring him unable to look after himself.

He had managed to escape on Saturday, and the police had to be called to find him and bring him back to the home, and his behaviour has been somewhat erratic of late. One of the carers, K, is just wonderful, and has him wrapped around her little finger, but I know it's often hard to know how to deal with him.

The psychiatrist has been called in, and they are hoping that a few tweaks to his medication might just help. However, the hospital still has his medical records, since June, and it's proving hard to get a hold of them. I have a lot of faith in this psychiatrist and I'm hopeful that we can at least cut down the sudden mood swings which are prevalent just now.

His four week "trial" is nearing an end, and it's with gratitude that I'm told that he'll be given another wee while yet before a decision is made. The Care Home want to give him a try with the revised medication. If this doesn't work out, goodness knows where he'll go, but I need to cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

I feel for him so much just now, but there's little else that can be done. He's just so unhappy and confused about why he has to be there.

Meanwhile, a house move is on the horizon. We get the keys to the new Rectory on Friday, and are planning to move in by the end of the month. At the moment I could see the upheaval far enough!

Dad

Strange visit yesterday, in which dad has, I think, had a moment of clarity and realises that his memory has gone and is bewildered as to why this should be and why he is in this Home. He asks, quite seriously if he's had an anurism or something cerebral that has made him like this. I feel for him. Suddenly there is the realisation that something is wrong and that is why he is where he is. I wonder if it is better this way... better than feeling that he's fine and the world is conspiring against a perfectly fit and rational pensioner. However, we have a good visit, piecing together some of the things that have happened, including Christmas which he'd forgotten about already. I came away knowing that he's in the right place, but knowing that the next visit could be very different indeed.

All is Well

Christmas Day and Christmas dinner, with dad, passed as well as we could have hoped for. There were no scenes, no tears, no tantrums or angry outbursts, and at the end he went back home like a lamb. Despite our fears it was a fairly pleasant day!

It was "cherry on top" time, too, when one of the senior workers from the home phoned at 9pm to say that she thought I could do with a bit of reaasurance, and that since the horrible assessment meeting, dad has calmed down greatly and looks as if he is going to settle and be kept on after the four week trial period. This is an outcome beyond my wildest dreams, and it was really thoughtful of her to phone. She just said that she had felt so sorry for me after the assessment meeting and wanted to pass on good news rather than me just hearing all the negatives.

There will be a psychiatric assessment early in the New Year, and his medication will be reviewed then. Anything that will lessen the horrendous mood swings will be accepted gratefully by all the family.

Thanks, good folk, for your prayers through this time. Greatly appreciated!

Dad at Christmas

After a lot of thought and a wee bit of prayer too, it's been decided to have dad for dinner tomorrow. Just dinner, without too much alcohol. The thought of leaving him in the home on Christmas Day was too much for us, and we'll take the consequences, and just hope that he'll go back quietly!

Happy Christmas to you all!

Continuing Saga

Dad moved into his new Retirement Home on Friday, but has been causing lots of problems since. Today, at a Social work assessment I was made aware that this was a four-week trial and things were not looking good. He's been aggressive, insulting and downright nasty to staff and clients, although at times his good side is still shining through. It really is the dementia. My dad was never like this, and I'm close to total despair at the moment.

Where he goes from here I don't know, although he's made it very clear that I should be having him to stay at the Rectory and I should be looking after him. We just couldn't cope.

Staff are saying that he will become more unsettled if we take him to the Rectory for Christmas dinner, but I don't know if I could live with myself if he wasn't here.

Hope for Now?

Difficult meeting this morning over dad, but at last it seems that something may get done. Social Work now see him as a danger to himself, after a couple of attempts at throwing himself over the bannister, and they will now actively seek to place him in a more appropriate setting. He is just so miserable and distressed where he is, and, of course it's all my fault!

We need mega-prayers now that we can find him a place in a home where he will be as happy as possible, and safe too. My hopes are not too high.

Let Down

The poor RW took a day off today, one of her precious holidays, hoping that we might get some time together. Firstly, All Souls Day got in the way today with two services, a meeting tonight, a funeral tomorrow which I had to prepare for, and several discussions with builders who are now attending to the snagging in our new hall. (Yes, Blethers, snagging with an "n"!!)

The dogs got a decent walk, though, in the rain, so they were happy.

Tomorrow is the dreaded "Assessment Meeting" in my dad's Care Home. He is so unhappy, but nobody seems to be coming up with any options, except some numpty in Social Work who is thinking he could maybe be ok back in the community with mega support. We've tried this so many times with disastrous consequences.

So, say a little prayer for us tomorrow! Every little helps!

If Only it Could be Like this all the Time

With heart in mouth, I took dad up his final bits and bobs this afternoon. He was grateful to get his DVD's, (and his teeth), was watching the golf on his own telly, was given a dram which he appreciated, and chatted on as if nothing had happened untoward in the past few days. We were lucky. We caught him in a good moment.

If only it could be like this all the time, but we know that a visit two hours later could have produced a very different scenario! Day at a time, Kenny! Day at a time!

Dad Stuff Again

Got called to the Care Home tonight. Father was at the gate and refused to return to the home. It was a dreadful two hours before I got him calmed down and up to his bed. Obviously the place he's in is not going to be any solution, but I'm tearing my hair out thinking of an alternative!

Dad Stuff

It's been a strange week, with my father and his situation living constantly in my head. Sure, he's out of hospital now, but in a Care Home in Cardross. There's a finality about the "Care Home" status which I'm finding hard to live with. This will not be his final place of residence, as he still desperately wants back to Glasgow and is on a waiting list for that to happen. The list is long and he's nowhere near the top.

It's the "Care Home" leap, and the finality of it. He'll never again be independent or able to care for himself, and I know that now I have to detach a bit, let him try to settle in his new surroundings, and visit when I can. He can come out with us still for a wee while, but his short term memory is woeful and he needs someone with him if he is to venture outside the big house.

The other residents are mostly in a more advanced state of physical and mental need, and maybe that's why he, himself, is pretty depressed just now. There have been lots of tears and a day when he did nothing but cry.

All sorts of feelings and emotions are snaking through my brain. Could we have done anything else that would have prevented this? Was it the right decision to bring him to Dumbarton in the first place? Every child must have some sort of "guilt" if that's the right word, when a parent is put into an establishment like this?

Dad himself is good at pressing the right buttons and stirring up emotions such as those!

At present I'm working on the Serenity Prayer, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change!

Old Age

I'm becoming increasingly alarmed by the number of people who are telling me how much I look like my father. He's 84 for goodness sake! Surely I'm not turning into an old man just yet? In saying this, we were looking through some old pictures as we begin to clear out his flat. One in particular of daddio some years back made me sit up! It was me!

Answer to Prayer

I was reluctant to blog the good news until I was certain that Social Work wouldn't pull out at the last minute. Dad has been given a lovely room in Bloomhill Care Home in Cardross, with en suite toilet and a gorgeous view of the River Clyde. He can shoot at ships from his window! (Don't joke Kenny!) He'll have his own TV and if he wants to isolate that's an option. He'll get a dram every night, and a puff of his pipe when he needs it!

It's the end of a long hospital saga, and I know we are extremely lucky to still have him. Blog prayers are powerful things!

How happy he'll be, I know not. Certainly most of the residents are in an advanced state of dementia, but if they treat him as someone who can help out, rather than "as a patient in need of great care", it may well work out.

He moves in tomorrow, Thursday, so we'll need lots of prayers that he'll settle! The blogosphere won't let me down, I know!

Frustration & Anger

'Twasn't a good visit to father last night. In his confusion he's bitterly angry and frustrated that he's restricted to the confines of Ward 15. A couple of "escape" attempts have not helped the demeanor of nurses who have more to do than chase after 84 year-olds who go awol and have to be rescued from the main road.

Social Work, obviously, badly let us all down last week, and that hasn't helped, but the anger and aggression towards the RW and me last night was quite phenomenal. I've got myself into a state of despair now. I don't see any way out of this, because whatever Care Home he ends up in will have the same restrictions, and he'll have to accept that his days of freedom to wander wherever he wants are now gone.

My sister is going up today. Don't think I could face another roasting within 24 hours!

Day Off

It's the "Day Off", although a couple of sick visits will be squeezed in between a good blether over lunch with some clergy, a dog walk, and of course a visit to father.

He's still in hospital awaiting a place in a Care Home, and it's taking forever. He's now getting really aggressive and extremely unsettled in the ward, and the hospital will be pleased to see him go I think. Social Work have been incredibly slow in placing him somewhere, anywhere, even as a stop-gap until he returns to his native and beloved Glasgow. Prayers, please, that something happens soon.

It was strange, at the end of last week, giving up his tenancy, disconnecting his phone and his Sky etc etc. Almost like a death, but in reality just the beginning of his final chapter. In saying that, he's had more comebacks than Lazarus, and the old codger will probably outlive me!

Disasters

The RW had a couple of disasters yesterday. We won't go into them too much, but the last one involved our dinner all over the kitchen floor, broken pyrex, three dogs and a lot of tears.

Today there is another one! The laptop won't start up Windows, however much I swear at it, and it obviously needs a doctor. I've had to borrow the church laptop meanwhile, but I'm sitting thinking abour all the files I should have backed up but didn't! Will they be saved, or will it be the second big computer disaster in nine months? Can only hope and pray that it will be healed!

Father is very depressed just now, and still in hospital awaiting a Care Home place. He's thoroughly miserable, and is good at transferring that to me. He knows the buttons to push!

Dad

Visits are depressing just now. Any humour seems to have gone, and what's there is wallowing in a decent, or indecent, bout of depression. His mind has accepted that there is no 'going home' now, although he can't really remember where home is. Now there are lots of tears and despair.

Getting him a place in a Care Home doesn't happen overnight, yet his hospital ward is a depressing place and those around him are similarly beset by dementia to one degree or another, although neither fellow patients in his 'room' even talk! He wants us just to take him home, which, obviously, we can't. It's all very sad.

Although I promise him I'll find somewhere for him to go soon, he's convinced that they'll carry him out of there in a box.

As I said, visits are depressing just now.

Dad

Thank you all so much for your prayers over the past weeks. An update is long overdue! Due to the incredibly tender and brilliant nursing care at the Vale of Leven Hospital, dad is making a half decent recovery, physically. When I look at him now, compared to Easter Day, I find it hard to believe.

However, his mind is really away now, and that's sad, although if you learn to laugh at the things he says, the pain is not so dreadful after all. At last it's become apparent, and not just to me, that he is totally incapable of looking after himself, and he'll not return home now.

We need to put him into care, and as we cannot afford private care, it will be in a place where there is a spare room! That process could take weeks or months. I get worried, too, because Care Homes can be a bit of a lottery, and I know from my ministry that some places are far superior to others. 

At the moment he can fluctuate from being quite accepting of the situation to being extremely unsettled and wanting home asap! The spark is still in there, and yesterday he was trying to kiss nurses!

The next wee while is not going to be easy, but with your thoughts and continuing prayers, we will get there in the end!

Crawling Back to Reality

After about 22 hours sleep since Sunday night, I'm crawling back into life again today, and even feel awake enough to lift my laptop!

Being "on team" at a Cursillo weekend can be an exhausting experience, and this one was no exception. However, so many beautiful things actually happened as a result and, undoubtedly, the Holy Spirit was hard at work! Together with the joy and laughter which is so much a part of the "Cursillo Experience", there was a lot of pain that surfaced and was dealt with, as well as it possibly could be, in the hurly-burly of the weekend itself.

The participants from Dumbarton certainly were as high as kites on Sunday evening, and even brought Linda and me a couple of freshly caught rainbow trout for our tea last night! Now we gear up for a long trip to Dumfries on Friday to welcome "home" the two Dumbarton participants! (To the Diocesan Group of course!)

I was welcomed home on Sunday night on my return by Archie and Toastie and Peanut, and ended up on my back being licked to death by three dogs! Eek! Somebody missed me!

After cutting myself off from the world, and my family, for almost five days, there were big updates on my dad. (I would have been contacted if anything serious had been happening). He has shown signs of an adequate physical recovery, apart from blinding headaches, but mentally he's "away with the fairies" as we say here, and I have no idea what's going to happen now. I'll get a chance to speak to hospital staff today, I hope.