15. Falls and Dementia

August dawned still quite cold. A couple of bad nights and first fall  on the 9th early morning but Bob on hand to help get her up. We now have someone every morning to get her up showered and do her breakfast. Even though they are often here at seven sometimes she has beaten them to it and managed to get herself dressed so of course is then uncooperative,doesn't want a shower but now she is incontinent needs one.

Next occurrence, again an early morning one was when she tried to go to the toilet without her frame which I think sometimes she can not see. Three days later one evening she was on the floor, Bob was out. I managed to get her into a kneeling position with her hands on the chair arms and with abit of help she managed to pull herself up.

While this was all happening her dementia was also getting worse, imaginary conversations with people that weren't there but of them all, ladies ,men the most constant were three little boys. One day I got home from bridge to find her quite distressed that one of them was ill and needed to be taken to the doctor. She would not settle all afternoon culminating in her walking a long way round sitting on a chair that wasn't there and sustaining quite a nasty bump on her head. In all she had seven falls in August. It was becoming clear that we were on a downward spiral.

Everybody was telling me it was time for a nursing home so I rang up to put her name down thinking I would be lucky to get a place before Christmas to be told to come in the next day for an interview to be told there was a bed available right away. Have to say it was providential. The nursing home in question was Braemar  the one I had been on the committee of for 25 years not as flash furnishing wise as Berrington and abit dated with too many plastic flowers around,  but we did know the care was good and Bob felt far more confident of her going in there than  the place she had been to for respite where it was very hard to find staff available. I did not have to pull any strings. So we had to start introducing the topic that she was going in residential care for me to have a rest but of course it was extremely difficult  for her one to hear what you were saying and two to understand it.