This one is not about my mum. Another person in my family is aged and ill. He is 89 this year, he has legionaires disease, drop foot and won't accept a care package. He has no family, only step family. None of him or his siblings ever had children, so it's us, the step family that are obliged to try and help him, when he won't accept help from anyone else. He's ill, he is on the verge of getting pnumonea yet again, as he seems to do every year. The pattern has emerged, and i've picked it. He gets sick in the winter, ends up in hospital in a very poor state to the point that he decides he needs care and nursing home, and that this is almost the end, and he accepts that. Then he is waiting for a place in the nursing home to come up, gets better, summer comes, and then he feels great again. He doesn't need help, he's in good spirits, feels better than ever, and doesn't accept the care package, and decides that he no longer wants the nursing home, so is put off the waiting list.
Then winter comes, and it's all on again.
So, he's on the verge of hospitalisation again, on the verge of going back on the waiting list for the nursing home again, but, yet again, won't be given a place immediately in a nursing home, so will get better and back to the start again.
It astounds me that for someone who lives alone, only has 2 couples in the whole world that visit him, doesn't accept outside help. I feel for him, but I have a whole bucket of people who are in front of him on my priority list who are close family, who are all sufferring their own health problems. I can't be everything to everyone, and I almost feel like it has to reach crisis point before something will be done. It is so very hard, because he has nobody in his life who has the power to "make decisions for him". He has no family. So who is going to push for extra care. I lead the horse to water, but I don't have the power to force him to drink. He sees me as his grand daughter, but I don't have the power to tell him that he needs to go into a nursing home.
So there we are, stale mate. I'll have to waste hours and hours on the phone, getting pushed from department to department, getting him assessed, getting him on waiting lists for nursing homes again, to know that he won't get in, and then he'll take himself off the list as soon as summer comes around again. What a malarky!
So, a few days later, he ends up in hospital. Then when visited, he's chipper as can be because he's been showered (probably for the first time in months) has clean linen, daily attention from various staff members, good food, plenty of offers of drinks, and can sit back and relax without having to attempt to do anything for himself for a few days, and he's back in contact with actual humans again. I feel for him, but I do belive he needs to recognise that he needs to accept a care package. How does one attempt to tell someone (who is basically deaf) that he needs to accept outside help? It would be so much easier for him, if there was someone coming in a couple of times each day to check on him, and help him with anything that he might need help with. But they lie, they have an assessment, then they make it sound like they are soldiering on quite well, and they've got everything under control. When, they really haven't, they really need help, they need human contact. Hmmmmm
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