ERCP people are hounding mum. She got a phone call and two letters now, as well as contacting both my sister and I and she, as predicted, has reacted badly.
She just can't be rocked at the moment, the slightest thing can undo her 'groove'. She feels safe at home with her telly and coffee and cigarettes and the carers. Her world is very small but manageable for her and she's happy - of sorts.
Yesterday I did my usual of dropping in the shopping...and copious amounts of cigarettes and then flitting through the house doing a bit of cleaning. I went through her larder cupboard and pulled out everything that had gone out - the prize going to sliced peaches which went out of date in 2009.
She was a wreck though. When I got there the telly wasn't on which is a dead giveaway that something is up, she was also still in her dressing gown, another dead giveaway. After unloading the shopping I sat down and she was flat, withdrawn, but couldn't remember what had upset her. She had an inkling though - 'Where you here when the Doctor was here?' 'What did Dr. X want again?' So she had forgotten the letters and phone calls but obviously not the gist or the fact that it was something medical.
Her memory was shot to pieces, as can happen when someone with Alzheimer's gets anxious, she was so confused and was forgetting everything. She was frightened and as the day went on she got more and more tearful. She wouldn't leave me downstairs to go and get dressed and kept putting it off, 'I'll go after one more cigarette, sit down with me' hence she was absolutely chain smoking. I asked her why she felt so insecure and she looked at me and said 'How do you know?' I just smiled.
Eventually I got her to go up and pull on some clothes, I was desperate for her to leave the kitchen and breakfast room so that I could not only hoover, but also 'normalise' the house in the hope that it would return her calm. I got the soup on the boil and buttered a roll, made the coffee and popped a choc-ice out of the freezer, turned the telly on to some drivel about the Olympics at her usual ear-splitting volume and made everything look just like another, normal day.
I really hope that worked, I left soon after as I had to pick the kids up...and dump two huge bin bags full of out of date food (thank god she hadn't been using that cupboard!). The problem with Mum though is that, although this would probably be a normal reaction from anyone who had just received worrying news, for her it can be the difference between mental health or ill health and when mum goes down it is such a bloody hard slog to get her back up!
I'm hoping that this is just a temporary blip, I've written to the Docs explaining the situation and requesting that they stall any further communication from the hospital until mums own doc comes back from leave and we can pick it up with him then. Right now, I understand that Mum has been fast-tracked and that part of that is to be persistent in the hope that people change their mind, but it's counter-productive for mum and they need to stop, I don't want her ending up back on the mental health ward over this...
