She had a reablement package from the hospital but refused to engage with them, insisting that I wanted to do everything for her - I didn't! She was obsessed by someone she had been in hospital with, desperate to find her, to get in touch and then became convinced that she had died.
Over the next few months I really struggled with her care and made a nuisance of myself at the GP's begging for help and asking for a Carer's Assessment. Then at the beginning of March 2020 a care package started - two calls morning and evening which made my life so much easier. A fortnight later the pandemic hit and we stayed home. Husband was on furlough, my two single daughters were home from work and school and we had a great time. Mum was hardly ever alone and we spent hours together.
At the end of the summer one daughter got married and moved out and the other daughter went to university and I realised how trapped I was - I couldn't leave her for more than hour. If I was on the phone she would press her emergency alert button. I would run out to her to find that she had dropped the tv remote/she wanted the loo "No rush"/her phone wasn't working. Even though she lived in my garden each visit to her could take half an hour.
She had always been such a sweet person, always seeing the good in everyone. But the carers were moody and rude. She could hear people talking about her outside her door. Someone was phoning her in the middle of the night and putting the phone before she could answer. (I checked the phone and no one had called) My dog had barked all night and kept her awake. (The dog hadn't left my side all night) And then the phone calls in the early hours started. She would tell me that she was awake and dressed waiting for the carers to come and it was too late for breakfast so would I come and do her lunch. Even with a Gro clock (blue, with the moon for night and yellow, with a sun for day) she didn't know if it was day or night and couldn't look through her bedroom window.
Then over the course of a fortnight in the summer of 2021 several things happened that really shook me. Mum was used to having her breakfast in bed. It was something my dad always did for her and when he died I did the same. I would take her her breakfast and the daily paper and put the tv on for her in her room then when she was ready I would help her dress and help her to her arm chair in the living room. When the carers started she no longer had breakfast in bed and she really missed it. The family were home for the weekend for my husband's birthday and we decided to have breakfast together to celebrate - husband had to go to work that afternoon and the family were travelling. We decided to cook in the granny annex so mum could be with us and I cancelled the carer for that morning. We talked about it for weeks and I promised I would bring her breakfast in bed that morning - I knew she wouldn't actually want to eat what we were cooking. So I went out to do her breakfast and found her half dressed because she didn't want the carer to find her as she was! She had forgotten overnight that the carer wasn't coming.
The next thing was that a good friend, probably the only one who had seen mum through the pandemic (part of our "bubble") took me aside and told me I needed to put boundaries in place because she was becoming more and more needy and I needed more help than the two visits a day that we had. She could see that mum was deteriorating because she saw more of her than most people and mum couldn't keep up the pretence for so long.
One evening I was with her as usual (I would cook dinner, take hers and mine and eat with her and watch tv with her until the carer came to put her to bed). My son rang and rather than take the call in another room I put him on speaker phone so that she could be part of the conversation, I looked over at her and she was sitting with her head in her hands crying and saying "I'm so lonely, so lonely. I don't want to be alone." At this time I was with her for an hour in the morning, an hour in the afternoon, three hours in the evening and every time she called me in between - probably ten calls a day on average.
A few days after that her fall alarm sounded and I ran out and found her naked on the floor in her ensuite, faeces all over her and all over the floor. My husband and I couldn't lift her and we were afraid to drag her because of the condition of her hips and knees so we called the ambulance. I sat with her and tried to clean up around her as much as I could. The paramedics came a few hours later and dragged her (respectfully - not a criticism!) out of the bathroom and sat her on the bed. They couldn't find anything wrong and left. As I was cleaning up the carer arrived, took one look at her and said we should call the GP out. I talked to the GP and told her that the carer thought mum had had a stroke. She told me to call the ambulance back and to tell them she wanted mum taken in for a full geriatric assessment.
We said that we were happy to have her home but we would not be providing personal care and she was assessed as needing 4 visits a day. While waiting for the care package it became clear that she didn't have the cognition to make decisions about her safety and she transferred to a rehab unit for further assessment and from there to a care home.
TDR: My otherwise sweet and loving mum became paranoid and unreasonable, she had audible and visual hallucinations and could not follow simple instructions (to get in and out of the wheelchair) and could no longer follow drama on tv.
