I cried at the doctors today and all I got was a rough bit of kitchen roll stuff. I was only allowed ten minutes of tears obviously. You'd think as I'm saving the NHS and social services a small fortune by caring for my dad it would be in their best interest to keep me going in a non sectionable state.
I still get cross with myself for crying, but I really don't seem able to control it at the moment.
It's Fathers Day and I know for a lot of people its a sad day coz they're missing their dad. Well my dad is still here and I miss him. The man I care for is not my dad, he is vague & confused and not the man whose little finger I would hold on to when we walked in the forest. One of my earliest memories of him is all of us waiting in the car to get on a ferry & cross a river in Devon (or somewhere - I was small) and the news filtering down the queue of cars that someone had had a heartattack. My dad went & brought him back after his heart had stopped then came back to the car cool as a cucumber LIKE SAVING A MAN'S LIFE WAS JUST SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED SOMETIMES. This man I care for struggles to tell the time. Ten past eight or twenty to two?
I miss my dad and this man who looks like him but is not him is an imposter.
They should also say "not that we'll do anything if you persuade them to come in" on the ads. The list of people who have been little or no help:
My dad's GP - eventually referred him to the emergency mental health team* but has done nothing else except mess up his prescriptions
The emergency mental health team* - talked a good talk and did put him on antidepressants which at least stopped him saying that he wanted to die. They got him a CT scan too which led to ...
The mental health team that are apparently specialists in ageing issues - diagnosed him with multi source dementia but have done nothing else.
The various mental health nurse teams* who came round to check he hadn't killed himself but didn't do anything.
The district nurses who seem so horrifically overworked I don't want to be mean but have been little help and do as little as is humanly possible which currently is nothing.
Social services - the amount of useless they have been cannot be described in words. They come round, ask if he can do everything, he lies, they tick a box and leave. HE'S GOT DEMENTIA YOU IDIOTS.
Some of my family - let's not go there today!
* all the teams are overlapping and have very similar names, I've given up trying to keep them straight in my head.
I plod on with no help - well none that doesn't come out of a bottle hating the lot of them!
I am beginning as I will no doubt go on, randomly, but it is kinda fitting as noone tells you about the complete randomness of dementia.
By this I mean the lack of pattern to what's forgotten and what's remembered & how their very character changes. There will no doubt be more - and more serious - blogs about this but today's is about burnt things.
I am lucky that my dad is not currently a fire hazard like one of my colleagues was (he was also a wanderer & peered into people's back windows) but he seems to only be able to recognize raw or burnt, not any level of cooked inbetween. To say things have to be well done is an understatement - the summer weather & my inability to bbq without burning things is a bit of a win it seems! Toast - the only thing he makes for himself - has to be black or it isn't "done".
His favourite thing for dinner is mashed potato - I may start serving it with charcoal.
