You Guess Is As Good As Mine

[poliphilo]

The carer arrives a little earlier than usual and my mother keeps her waiting while she pours herself another cup of tea and drinks it. I read this as bloody minded self assertion; Ailz reads it as an inability to deviate from routine.

"Are you happy to have Lauren stand here watching you drink that cup of tea?" I ask, trying not to explode.

""No." Says my mother, "But what else can I do?"

Comments

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

I'm with Ailz on this one.

(Also, I believe that if carers turn up early, it is their job to wait).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I feel for the carers. Hard work, poorly paid: I think it's the client's obligation to treat them with courtesy.

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

I do too, and I always treat my carers with courtesy.

If it helps any, the ones I work with are well aware that their clients can't always follow the normal rules - and they care about them anyway. They understand the need for routine in some clients very well.

If I'm not ready for my carer's help, they're invited to sit and wait and have a cuppa and snack.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Indeed, but it could be that your mother is showing the first early signs of Alzheimers and you have to forgive people in that situation because they are literally not the people they once were. Being unable to deviate from routine would be a symptom.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It hasn't been diagnosed as such but I'm sure she has Alzheimers. We try to keep things ticking over normally- as if nothing were the matter- but things are very far from normal.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

So it is (I've done care work with elder folk) but you have to recall that people aren't always capable of such courtesy and your ma's memory is going so one tends to be a bit forgiving as I'm sure Lauren is well aware.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My mother has always been capable of eye-watering rudeness. These days, actually, she's a considerably more mellow.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

My two cents: Ailz is absolutely right.

Ten years before her Alzheimer's was recognized, my mother-in-law went quietly ballistic in the kitchen because I asked my father-in-law to omit the salt from the rim of my margarita. If there's no salt it's not a proper margarita, she said to him, and you should make her choose another cocktail.

Some years later I realized that this and various other strict rule-following pronouncements were the result of no longer being able to think outside the rule book. To throw away the rules meant she'd have to go into here be dragons territory.

Why not invite Lauren to sit down and have a cup of tea herself while she waits?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We did ask her to sit; she didn't want to.

I'm very conscious that she's working to a timetable and that if my mother keeps her hanging about she's going to be late for the next appointment.

Her routine is very important to my mother- but, even so, she's beginning to forget what it is.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Yes, Ailz is absolutely right. Your mother has reached the point where she can't think beyond her routine. As her son you are too close to her to have much patience. When my mum was alive I lacked understanding and patience with her when she was failing mentally and now wish it had been otherwise.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're right. I'm too close. Ailz finds my mother's foibles considerably more endearing than I do.

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

In my own experience and in what I've seen with people around me, adult children are often the least able to adapt to a parent's illness.

Other people are better able to interact with them as fellow human beings, rather than be plagued by the overwhelming sense of loss of role (theirs and yours).

I find care sessions (usually) work better when they are time related rather than task related. Not a universal rule, but more of a guideline.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"Loss of role"- I can identify with that.

She was the parent and I was the child and now it's something like the other way round. And then, of course, this is the final stage of a relationship of 60 + years which has gone through many phases- not all of them particularly friendly.