Being pulled apart. Part 2: A care home is not a home from home.

13 days after her return from hospital Beryl was once again uprooted, this time to a care home called Ormesby Grange. Fortunately enough Ormesby Grange was only a ten minute walk from the flats down the main road that runs beside this building and I was able to visit every day, twice a day. On the day I picked her up from the care home I was told by the staff that they thought she may have a urinary infection as her urine had a strong odour, a pointer to such an infection. The infection had  made Beryl more unresponsive than usual and she was sleeping for long periods and losing her apatite and unable to take much liquids, a most worrying time as her brother died last month and he had stopped drinking and eating. I called the doctor and she prescribed antibiotics. Seven or eight days later I got a phone call from the doctor saying that the antibiotics she had prescribed were resistant to that type of Urinary Infection but when I told her that I thought the infection was gone as her urine no longer had an odour she left it at that. A few days later I smelt the same odour that pointed to her recent infection and once again she stopped, or could not swallow fluids or food to any life sustaining degree.

I got the doctor out again yesterday and he prescribed a more potent antibiotic, which I took to the chemist who, would you believe, did not have it in stock so I had to wait till today to get it. She has had one dose and another two to go before bedtime so I do hope this takes effect rather quickly as it is hard to eat myself when Beryl has been without much food or drink for so long.

Since Beryl came out of hospital after the new year I have called the doctor and the NHS Direct a few times and each time a doctor came to see her they gave her the full treatment, ie blood pressure check, heart monitoring and chest monitoring and found her chest, heart and blood pressure ok which relieves my mind somewhat and can only think that this damn infection of the Urinary Tract has took the wind out of her sails but each time she goes through such things it appears to me her dementia gets that little bit worse, I do hope I am wrong but I fully realise there is no fairytale ending to Alzheimer's, I know how it ends but I do not know when. I am preparing for the worse because I know it is coming, will we see this year out together I keep wondering?

Beryl is in what I see as being in the late stages of her dementia and can no longer communicate to me or others by word of mouth. She can walk, with my aid and I now have a wheelchair to take her on longer journeys to the shops which I have not done so much recently due to the bad weather and her present ill health. She communicates anger pretty well which lets me know when I am doing something wrong. This can be unhelpful at times like when I am trying to give her medicine or feeding her by hand, which I have to do. Sometimes when feeding her and she gets angry she takes the spoon out of my hand to feed herself, which bolsters me because that is one thing why I married her, she always was her own woman so it is ironic that she is reduced to this. Beryl turned 73 today the 11th of February 2012.

Recently the news has been full of reports about the treatment of our elderly and vulnerable who are cared by the state and the news does not bode well. This is why I have vowed that Beryl and I will leave this world in our own home rather than spend our days being looked after by others that do not know us and probably do not care to know us. When our life cycle ends naturally it's good to go in your own bed. Sorry for appearing to be so maudlin.

PS: Things are at a stage now with me and Beryl that I have not time to add anything to the Freedom2Choose blog and my interests are elsewhere as Beryl's decline gets more pronounced. I will carry on looking after the mundain things for F2C like office duties but blog writing and commenting on all things smoking ban are not of my biggest concern at the moment.

To be continued...