OneGuyFromBarlick

Just right.....

So pleased to hear it all went so well. I second Sue's comment.

Morning Liz! Nice to know Australia is alive and kicking... I rang Wendy yesterday, couldn't wait 'til she posted.... She sounded bright as a button!

It's late afternoon here Stanley, but I appreciate the sentiment. It's almost time to open the bar!!

It's nice the way you all look out for each other. We haven't lived here long enough to have that relationship with our neighbours.

"Nice the way you look after each other"
I agree, but recognise that Wendy isn't so much a neighbour as a friend met through the site. Distance is no object! If TLC is needed you qualify as well!

The support I have received from all of you has been wonderful. This topic has been a great place to share worries & frustrations with the older generation.
I'm beginning to feel a refreshing sense of freedom! When Dad died twelve years ago I became responsible for the affairs of his older sister who was in a nursing home and had no family of her own, then I somehow got involved with the care of Dad's cousin Muriel who was also alone in the world, and through it all Mum needed constant support.
There's no one else left in that generation, so I'm free......but now we are the older generation! I had best start practising being awkward and difficult.

Wendyf wrote:There's no one else left in that generation, so I'm free......but now we are the older generation! I had best start practising being awkward and difficult.

There's probably a U3A course you could take to learn it Wendy! As Stanley always says, onwards and upwards.

You can now enjoy the advantages of being a fully fledged orphan! I remember when my mother died a friend said "Ah, you're and orphan now!" and it surprised me but quite true. How many times have you heard me say how lucky I was in that both my parents made swift and painless exits.
On a different subject. I rang a friend yesterday but he wasn't in. I spoke to his wife and soon realised I had walked into a SITUATION! I got well over half an hour of dire medical and marital problems. In the end I claimed that Jack was about to pee in the corner to get off the line. I reflected afterwards that I might have been useful, at least she got it all off her chest! I couldn't help but remember Thoreau; "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation". Worth remembering at times that there is always someone worse of than you are.

The last few days have confirmed how useful it is to have caring family at hand.... I am so lucky!

Communication seems to be failing between the private company that runs my Dad's `Extra Care House' on behalf of the council and the council itself. I won't bore you with details but it involves each side blaming the other for an omission in my Dad's care. The council says the company agreed to take responsibility and the company says they know nothing about it. The carers are good but the organisations don't communicate effectively.

Update, later: The omission concerns putting drops of olive oil in my Dad's ears for 7 days because the council carer found they were bunged up with wax and needed syringing (which can't be done until after 7 days of oil treatment). The company carers were supposed to be doing it but it turns out they "can't administer anything unless it has been obtained on prescription for my father". They say they ordered the oil from the doctor on 10 June and it hasn't arrived yet (2 weeks ago!) and seem to think this exonerates them from all further responsibility. The council carer thought Dad was being given the oil. The company carers say they told the council carer. She says they didn't.

Tiz, I replied yesterday but the post seems to have fallen down a crack! You reminded me that I need to get some Earex drops to get some wax out of my ears.

12th July would have been Dan's 34th birthday. I think I have mentioned before that he was born to the sound of Keighley brass band playing the Floral Dance outside the delivery room on Airedale Hospital fun day. No brass band for Dan today but quiet reflection on a family walk up round Weets with our other two kids. It's a nice day for it and very similar to what it was like on this day in 1980.

Nothing to add to that beyond the fact that we shouldn't have to bury our kids....

It's a shame that Saga magazine gives people such a rosy view of the old age that awaits them. It's not like that for everyone. We now have Mrs Tiz's mum with supranuclear palsy, unable to talk, having trouble swallowing and needing to be lifted in and out of bed. Mrs Tiz's dad with his Parkinson's and dementia is struggling on but has difficulty keeping a conversation going and keeps forgetting why he can't live like he used to. He's just been on the phone asking for money to buy clothes but he can't go out from the nursing home to buy them and wouldn't be able to cope with paying anyway. Mrs Tiz's sister buys everything he needs and gets refunded from his bank account via the power of attorney. But he thinks they are with-holding his money and they have to remind him about the power of attorney and why it's in place.

My dad is complaining that the carers are stealing his tea bags, tissues, kitchen towels - you name it, they're stealing it! If something is not where he expects it to be then it's stolen. He's lost his sense of time so as the level of tea bags goes down he blames it on theft instead of understanding that it's him drinking tea that is responsible! He had his ears syringed last week (lots of wax!) and is now disappointed because he was convinced that he wouldn't need hearing aids once the wax was gone. He won't accept that his hearing has been very bad for years and he's dependent on the large type aids - which he doesn't like because people can see them. He's making up stories such as telling us that the carer who took him for the syringing drove to a distant town and trailed him around in his slippers. All untrue - he was taken to the local surgery and had his proper shoes on. At least the carers are used to him now and know he tells a lot of fibs - I shudder to think what he tells them about us! Oh well, onwards and upwards!

What a depressing glimpse of real life... I agree with you about Saga Tiz. For a few years they deem to have been operating more and more commercially with holidays, insurance etc. I used to read the junk mail from them but now it goes straight in the Universal Filing System. I was going to give a report on our latest family news but then thought why tempt fate!

Saga keep sending up letters offering us home insurance for £135 a year, a lot less than we currently pay the Co-op. We had it from Saga until a couple of years ago when we went to Co-op because Saga had booted the premium up dramatically. Saga still have all our details and therefore can work out what we need and what the premium would be from them, hence the letters. But guess what. When I contacted them this time and said I wanted to take out the £135 policy they went through it all again and said it would be £270, which is the same as we pay to renew the Co-op policy. Since then I have received another of there letters telling me my premium would be £135. Never believe what Saga tell you. We found they were charging Mrs Tiz's parents about £1400 a year and we got them switched elsewhere, same cover, for about £500 premium.

Just had the same letter Tiz, fed the re-cycling bin.

Best place for the offer....
Kids are impressed by my clean loose covers....

Great grandson Alex at the local hospital day before yesterday. He had been bringing everything up so they checked him out. The verdict was that he'd picked up something and eaten it. No medication so his immune system will have benefited! He's 21 months old now and the spitting image of his dad. Poor lad....

He looks like a lot of fun, Stanley.
I have a soft spot for boys ( girls are great, but I don't know what to do with them).

I think he ought to be called Buster.... There's something about him that spells trouble later on!

I think I see "active chap's climbing bruises" on his shins ( all perfectly normal)...so yes...he would be a handful.

You're right, I hadn't noticed them.....

You'll see today's news reports mention something like the following (from BBC): "Vulnerable patients in England will get better support in the community as part of plans to ease pressure on hospitals, ministers say. Joint teams of social care workers and NHS staff such as nurses and physios will become available seven days a week under the changes being unveiled. The move is part of the government's Better Care Fund to join up the NHS and council-run social care systems....The government is trumpeting the £5.3 billion that has been set aside for the Better Care Fund."

It makes me want to shout "Sort out your present problems before you start on yet another initiative!" I've had a typical example recently of such a problem. A year ago my dad was supposed to be `on the list' for a flu jab when visits were made to care homes in the town. I was told in October but November came, then December and still no flu jab. I kept ringing the surgery and first they were going to do the jabs, then it was going to be a district nurse, but after some weeks they claimed they were too busy, so it was back to being a task for the surgery. He never got a flu jab last winter - and I was annoyed! When I had my flu jab last week (my surgery's in a different town) I asked the nurse about my father's situation and she was appalled by the way he'd been let down. She said it was the job of the district nurses and that her surgery would have insisted they did the visits, not the surgery. That's what district nurses are for! I've been in touch with dad's surgery and they claim that he's on the list and will receive a flu jab this year. I'll believe it when I see it.

I spoke to his surgery today on another matter. He was visited recently by a district nurse (surprise!) to `take a blood test' but we and the carers don't know why - none of us asked for the test to be set up. At the time of the visit he was away at the day centre were he's taken for lunch twice a week and the district nurse told the carers that they would delete him from their list of people to visit. "If he can go out then he can go to the surgery" was what the nurse said. Nothing further happened and we all assumed it couldn't have been anything important, just a routine test. When I spoke to the surgery this morning and asked them about it they refused to discuss it with me (`patient confidentiality'). The lady claimed they only had my wife `listed as a carer' yet we have both in the past filled in forms with them to be registered as a his carer. I then found out that, coincidentally, he'd been visited this morning by a nurse and doctor but they still wouldn't tell me why! They said I'd have to ask the carers, who eventually told me his feet are swollen and they're concerned about the cause.

Communication and cooperation among the various medical professionals and between them and the care services seem to be at rock bottom, with each criticising the others. £5.3 billion isn't going to cure that - it's better management and organisation that's needed, and quickly before the services collapse altogether.

What a dismal account of the state of the care your dad's getting Tiz. It appears to me that the standard of care a patient receives is down to how vocal and aggressive they are on their own behalf when the system should be geared to making sure that the correct interventions are made in a transparent way with proper record-keeping to ensure that it is happening. People in your dad's position aren't capable of chasing these matters for themselves. That's what 'care' means! What you describe is inefficient and hence expensive chaos.