Healthy living Blog
Carer Diary
July 30, 2008: the wisdom that comes from knowing nothing
Marianne's plans to have her mother assessed for a place in a specialist dementia nursing home are scuppered by her siblings
Aaargh!
ANOTHER assessment! So far, I’m told, we have had only the preliminary assessments. Well, of course.
At least we have a date. They’re coming on Friday at 11 am. Poor mum. She detests getting up early. But it will take two hours to get here. In this hot weather that won’t be much fun. I suggested that the assessor and I travel to mum. But no go. So much for the patient-centred approach.
But then another complication arose. When I rang my brother about the appointment, he dropped a bombshell. He and his wife and my sister had decided that mum would be ‘traumatized’ by returning here. ‘The assessment,’ he said ‘will have to be somewhere else’.
I completely lost it.
They’re telling me this NOW? Didn’t they think of telling me before I finally succeeded in getting the appointment?
Anyway, what business have they ‘deciding’ this without me? How dare they decide anything without consulting me?
The idea that coming here would traumatize mum hurts. It implies that this house, where I loved and cared for her for so long, is a place of pain for mum. But any pain mum experienced here was integral to the Alzheimer’s. Any other pain was mine. Even the final crisis was successfully kept from mum. Mum just thought (if she thought at all) that she was going off with her brother for a holiday. She saw nothing of the tears, or the doctor’s to-ing and fro-ing.
Perhaps my siblings think mum would be traumatized by being reminded of, then removed from, her home? But if this is right it demonstrates their lack of grip on mum’s condition.
For this to happen mum would have to recognise this as her home, want to be here, recognise that she was only visiting and, putting all this together, become traumatized.
Dream on: mum hasn’t the foggiest idea where she is, never mind where she wants to be. I am only too aware of her emotional memory, but it isn’t up to the sort of sophisticated reasoning this requires.
So I am furious with my siblings. And they think I am being unreasonable.
If you are a carer this situation will be familiar. The carer slogs on until they hit a brick wall. Then everyone else weighs in with the wisdom that comes from knowing nothing. Then, when the carer goes ballistic, everyone shakes their head about how over-sensitive the carer is.
It is only at carers’ get-togethers that you remember you are an ordinary human being doing a job that would drive even a saint mad. At that point it becomes funny.
But it doesn’t feel in the slightest bit funny from where I am currently standing.
More from Marianne Talbot
- Keeping Mum: Marianne Talbot's archive of blogs about caring for her mother who has Alzheimer's disease
- Coping with caring: Marianne Talbot's top tips
- Give us a break: why R&R helps make you a better carer
- Video: watch Marianne Talbot and Emma Soames talk about the reality of caring
Saga and caring
- Visit our carers' section
- Saga Respite for Carers Trust
- Saga Long Term Care Funding Advice
- Chat to other carers at Saga Zone
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