Little update on dad

What you need is to talk to people, no just about health matters but your nail colours and what to dress the table like on Christmas Day. I’ll come in to the serious questions in a bit but you need to take care of number one first. So who can you talk to. Friends, family. A club or a physical group that support cancer carers, or have a cuppa out in town or down the road and take five (as Dave Brubeck once said).

The bit about the diarrhoea is the battle between a bums-rush and waiting for a bus, the drugs is as hard on the patient as food and illness but he’s unwell (UTI) so he needs to get better in many wars inside him, it’s not just his, his belly, his cancer, or his pipework, he needs to get back his general health.

As for a stay in hospital while the tests get carried out… you won’t be the first person to think that that’s a good idea but when you sit down think about it, it’s never going to happen without a cause the gets him into hospital in the first place. The NHS over the last three years has, in my very amateur view, brimmed over. Some of this is the way Covid affected our view of how to receive care and some the lack of resources. Either way the last thing they will be able to give you and your Dad is the help you need when you want it.

I have so much sympathies you going through what you’re going through. A few years back I was laying on the floor with my mum. The paramedics were in their way. It was the middle of the night and we were alone. She trusted me to do any and everything. He legs bottom and undercarriage was as clean as I could get it, and not only was I think like you “I should not been seeming things like this” once we had got the responce team in and off to hospital after this fall in the loo mid crisis (if you know what I mean) I did start to calm down when later in the early hours of the next day and after I’d cleaned my hands, twenty times, the fractured pelvis she sustained was made better for the first hour and a half by me being the cleaner, carer, dutiful son, and flat cleaner shopper and chief bottle washer I was also human. And you and I would do it again though we k ow at the time we were questioning “how did it get to this”.

My advice is to lean back in that chair pat yourself on the back and have a big slice of you favourite cake in honour of your continued success in caring for your Dad.

It’s not easy. You will not get paid. Your advocacy on behalf of your Dad is tiresome and endless, but day by day you realise you can only do so much, the same as the NHS

If I was a multi trillionaire I think I might, if I was still able to be “normal” I would love to help the NHS recover what Covid too away. But being a multi trillionaire I might have won my money from the Covid roulette that a load of rich people did, so it would be like giving it back to where it should have gone. I only mean that if the NHS had more money and beds and staff your Dad would have a speedier service (but you’d be even more worn out).

So keep an eye on medical, GP and oncology reports and appointments so that you don’t loose focus on the main thing and that is that your Dad needs and loves you help.

Good luck

Hello Disneylandb3ad46 

You are doing great - sadly it's part and parcel of being a child as your parents get older (yes I have had to shower and clean my mother - and my cousin as they have grown older and lived alone).

The NHS are doing what they can for you - and yes you do have to keep pushing them or they will let things slide so try and keep on top of dad's appointments.

We do have another group you can join and find help in your circumstances and here's the link you need:

Carers only forum 

Once you click on the link I have provided it will take you there and you can ask any questions regarding dad's care just as you do here.

Best wishes - Brian.