Caring and sharing

H’s stay in hospital was not a happy one, but when I look back now it was merely a warm up for her subsequent admission into a nursing home a fortnight or so ago, which has been five times worse.

Hospital wards are traumatic at the best of times, but when you are almost 90, with a broken hip and suffering from dementia, they are absolutely the last place you want to be for more than about 10 minutes, (and that’s pushing it). Everyone was very kind, as they always are, but she just couldn’t deal with the noise, the constant banging and clattering, and the food which she took upon herself one evening to throw across the room shouting ” Get me the French consulate” as she spattered her bedside with a rather unnaturally  coloured orange stew.

There were four old ladies in the ward, thin and wiry in bed coats with unopened copies of Woman’s weekly,  packets of wine gums and Ribena on their tables. The woman opposite spent most of her time asleep but was interrupted every hour or so by H shouting at her to say she was sorry for all the shouting. Next to Mrs Trying to sleep  was a tiny little bird of a woman who had broken her arm and spent all day in tears, wondering where her bed was. And next door to H was a very old woman who barely moved but was coaxed to eat and drink by her sons who held her hands and combed her hair and told her about the weather and how the garden was looking. Goodness knows what they made of us.

H was very confused,  convinced that she had been taken somewhere,  though she wasn’t sure where. Their old house? The secret room she thinks is somewhere upstairs from their flat where she swears I live? ( when I’m not rifling through all her paperwork and hiding her things),  or to Egypt?. Our visits were awkward and uncomfortable as we tried to steer the conversations to every day things, rather than the inevitable unfiltered and unmistakable comments about the nurses as they came and went ( “she’s useless, it must be awful being so ugly,” that sort of thing) all the time hoping they didn’t notice as they cheerfully checked her blood pressure etc and tried to persuade her to take her medicine.  “Step away from me you Jezebel” she shrieked at them,  while her cackling laughter sounded as if she was auditioning for a re- make of the Exorcist.

Progress towards mobility was halted when one of the physios left her sitting in a chair and went away, so inevitably she toppled out on to the hard shiny floor. Her broken hip was not damaged but she had a nasty bruise and we had to drive back to the hospital to talk to the nurses where we found her wild eyed and screaming as they tried to settle her down.

Eventually after 10 days, the doctors deemed her fit enough to travel and she was driven to take  up residence in the dementia unit of a very nice nursing home about 10 minutes away from where she used to live. She is on what is known as the ‘escapee floor’ as many of her fellow residents have been moved  there from other nearby homes, homes who  couldn’t manage them or who had in fact just absconded . My favourite is Charlie who climbed over a wall in his last place and went to the pub. I hope someone bought him a pint.

H was, by all accounts, quite calm when on the morning when she arrived, and asked to use the phone to ring my dad. Not realising that she has absolutely no memory of anything like phone numbers they kindly plugged in a phone for her. She promptly rang 999 and told the operator that she had been kidnapped. This obviously happens quite often as the office then rang the nursing home to double check that nobody had actually been abducted. and the phone was duly removed.

Things started to deteriorate that afternoon and poor H has now lost her voice because she spends most of her time shouting or weeping with dry teared rasping convulsions. Sometimes she calms down and sits listening  to music or watches the news, but then it starts again. The nurses wheel her into the sitting room which has a view of the rose garden with big French windows,  but she scrunches up her eyes and says how sorry she is for the poor souls who have to live there,  and asks the lovely black nurse when she is going back to her own country. Visits are pretty tense and you can usually hear the yelling as you walk down the corridor, a knot of dread in your stomach as you brace yourself.  My dad sits holding her hand,  telling her how much he loves her and she tells him how useless he is because he has never been to visit ( he goes every day). Sometimes she tries to hit us or spits at the nurses when they brings her tea. And then suddenly she will smile and ask me how the children are.

As I drive up the A303 after these weekly visits,  I ponder what to do. What to do when you are very old, and actually you have had enough and your options are limited to put it mildly. And what I would want to do if I were them.

Not be so isolated for a start. Live somewhere that isn’t 3 miles from the nearest shops. Get together with your chums and live together. Make your children buy a bigger house so you can go and live with them. Join a choir/book club/ Pilates/keep fit/paint/walk/garden/ knit/learn how to use a computer.

All easier said than done I know, but anything would be better than one of them being alone in an empty flat,  and  the other having to live somewhere that really isn’t her own home and never will be.

And at the end of the day,  the hard reality is the fact that they will never get to live together again.