My mother was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2010. This is a blog about coming to terms with her absent mind.

Wednesday 11 July 2012

Fun and Games

The biggest issue I've had to deal with over recent weeks has been one of 'containment', particularly first thing in the morning, and four times in the last 6 days is apparently the tipping point. Without being overly coy or going into graphic detail it has meant washing everything in sight, starting with Ma and working outwards via the bed, bedding, soft furnishings, walls, floor etc. Ma gets distressed when she is put in the shower but unfortunately it is the only way to deal with the situation. Or it was... I think I may have come up with a solution.

It occurred to me that if I could remove access (as it were) then 90% of the problem would be sorted. So a bit of brainstorming later and she now goes to bed in long cycling shorts to keep the pad and net knickers arrangement snugly in place and then over the top she wears an all-in-one pyjama effort. These are not dissimilar to old fashioned long johns, the twist is that I put them on backwards so that the fastenings are out of reach. We are now on day three of this new regime and so far it's been 100% successful. One bonus I hadn't anticipated is that she appears to be much warmer in bed and the knock on effect of that has been that she sleeps more soundly and hasn't been up wandering about quite so much at 0 dark hundred hours.

Now I need to find some way of replicating this for daytime to stop the disrobing issue. Plain onesies without a pattern would do the trick but I'm not having much luck finding any small enough. If you happen to see any please let me know - the ones I have bought are sized for 13 year olds.

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Phoned the surgery this morning because Ma had a skin tear on her leg at some point overnight. The appointment was for 10.30 which was fine, I would take her on to day care afterwards and rang them to say she would be late otherwise her lunch would be in danger of being cancelled. I thought it would be a quick in and out then off to the day centre with barely a blip. Silly moi.

We did eventually get in to see the GP but only after a 50 minute wait because she had 3 appointments run over. Ma was teasey and shouty after 15 minutes so you can imagine how stressy it was. Not surprised that GP was running over though, I went in just wanting to know if it should be dressing on or off, if antibiotics on stand by should be used or not and when to call if things deteriorated. I'm not lacking in intelligence but some of the situations I am now dealing with are new territory so I needed a quick precis on what to do coupled with reassurance that what I am already doing is fine. The GP gave me a full 15 minute run down on how the wound had probably happened, how it would likely heal, what to put on it etc. I have to say that in some ways she deserves a gold star, talking about something so minor for 15 minutes is a skill. She really needs to edit.

Thinking about the way the skin tear happened, I suspect it was the onesie wot did it. They all have a ribbed cuff at the bottom of the leg which is joined to the main body of the garment with some fairly robust stitching. So today I have been removing said cuffs off all the onesies and hemming up the softer jersey cotton. Hopefully this will stop any further injury. I really should have anticipated that though. Sigh.

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Thistle blip today


3 comments:

  1. Have you tried Primark? These 'onesies' seem to come in all sizes/shapes/animal imitations there...

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  2. Yes Anne, I got two from Primark and two from Next. Trouble is they are a bit too colourful (the Next ones are covered in strawberries, the Primark ones are bright stripes) for wearing discretely during the day! Although if we're at home alone all day I don't suppose it will matter.

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  3. There is a company who sell onesies on ebay called appropriately enough The Onesie Company, who will make them up to order. Not sure about price but you can get their contact details on ebay.

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