occupational therapy for weelbeing support

FormerMember over 3 years ago

2 replies
34 subscribers
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I am looking for advice about how to go about getting occupational therapy for my mum who has untreatable cancer of the oesophacus.

She is very elderly and her memory is very bad now, though she refuses to talk to the doctor about her memory so has no diagnosis. Due to her memory loss I am doing my best to take over most of the household bills and financila affairs and my dad is stiill able to do most of the housework. She spends a lot of her time outting together lists of orders from catalogues for gifts for family and friends which she asks me to order and then forgets all about. I feel my mum could really benifit from support to find something to occupy her time during the day and hopefully lift her mood somewhat. For various reasons visitors are few and far between these days. I am unable to get through to see her more than twice a week due to work and even then she does not take suggestions from me very well lol! Suggestions for activities coming from a medical proessional though she would probably take very well.

tia

GRANNY59 over 3 years ago

Hi Robbie73 welcome to the forum and sorry that you haven't had a response as yet.

Having read and re-read your post I cant help feeling that there are lots of different things going on at the one time, all of which maybe needs different people to be involved and I also feel Occupational Therapy may be quite far down the list at the present time.

You say your Mum's memory is poor and that a worry as she is ordering things and making lists and hopefully not managing to actually buy things online. I cant help feeling that maybe you need to contact the GP and tell them exactly whats is happening as your mum obviously doesn't recognise that there is an issue. I'm not sure if this is related to her diagnosis or not but needs checked out.

The other things that you could do is to give the folks at Macmillan a call and get some advice for you on how best to move forward for you all. 08088080000.

FormerMember over 3 years ago in reply to GRANNY59

Thank you for the advice Gail. I did try to speak to the doctor about my mum's memory a while back but was told my mum or my dad would need to bring it up, they couldn't discuss my mum's health with me etc. they are both very reluctant to talk to the doctor about it due to having some strong taboos around mental health. However I think I will try again. As you say one thing needs to be dealt with at a time.

I would feel so much better if a health professional would take this seriously and look into how they can both be supported.

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occupational therapy for weelbeing support