Pondering

I'm happy to bimble along looking after the cooking/cleaning/medication/daily routine etc. It's not particularly arduous and in and amongst things I'm able to do some writing and recipe stuff. When Ma goes off on one it can be amusing but it can also be slightly alarming, like it was on Wednesday. I really did try but couldn't make sense out of anything she was saying, not even to go along with her and make a 'conversation' - something which the book recommends as a way of keeping things unchallenging and comfortable for the dementia sufferer. So, for example, if she believes she's on holiday in Barbados, you go along with it. Not a chance of that happening on Wednesday. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get used to it.

This morning she was back to messing about with her medication again. There were tablets everywhere and as five of the seven are round and white and identical I couldn't distinguish one from another. All went in the bin and now the tablets are being kept elsewhere. I do understand that this is her attempt to keep control of something but unfortunately she isn't capable of doing this with her medication. I can live with the current insistence on wearing her slippers everywhere rather than shoes but clearly cannot allow her to poison herself.

She asks me all the time if there's anything she can do, so this morning I said 'Yes please! You could put the Dyson round the living room'. Once we'd established that it lives in the cupboard under the stairs not the pantry, we were away. It's a difficult line to walk between helping her to do something and taking over but after five minutes I thought it would be more effective if we plugged the thing in. Then after another couple suggested that she put the 'foot' down instead of pushing it around with the brushes roaring away in mid air. Ultimately it was a short-lived exercise due to aching arms and the admission that she'd never used the machine before because Dad always did it...