Every day now he asks, "what is wrong with me"? The answer is always the same. Well, you have a brain tumour and bladder cancer which makes you lose a lot of blood through your urine. This has made you weak. You are also not able to eat normally so have lost a little weight. Dad acknowledges the explaination and remains thoughtful. One day he responded with "well that sounds......."(pauses). I knew what he was going to say. "That sounds like I`m at the end of life", he says while not actually looking too sure about that. Let's hope not I replied. I never know what the right thing is to say to him but have decided to respond with the truth, I think he appreciates this. He is the one making all the jokes anyway.
My sister gives him his orders regularly on a daily basis. This I see helps her cope with the situation. He in turn gives her orders and in this way they bounce off each other throughout the day. I suspect they are in effect keeping each other going, dreading and yet valuing every moment together.
My job is more with mother as my sister and I soon discovered it to be impossible to both take care of our two parents while dad became bedridden and mum went into respite. Mum will be home soon and we now realise it will take both of us working together to make this work. We both work full time too and am constantly asking myself how am I going to do this mammoth task. In reality I have already been doing this to a lesser extent but increasingly over 7/8 years now. We have struggled with their complete life takeover as in the last few months - hospital app/ ops/ podiatrist/ district nurses/ doctors/a&e/ social workers etc. The staff are usually great but the system fails. We manage all their affairs and co-ordinate everything ourselves because we have found we can't rely on professionals to communicate and get the job done correctly. We really could do with a parent's manager who would co ordinate everything to do with their health needs so that my sister and I can just spend quality time with them and with less stress to boot. I know, I'm expecting a lot there now arn`t I !
