Dad will be discharged on the 24 or 25 April and will head home.
He's made the (brave) decision to not have any more surgery on his tumours and let the cancer run its course. No one is sure how long he has left. The throat tumour has grown in size since it was last looked at a few weeks ago, so it may not be long.
We went to visit Mum together last weekend and he found that really hard as he is now seeing just how ill she is. He also found it hard that she cannot understand that he's dying and she cannot show compassion or empathy.
He's had to deal head on with lots of stuff this weekend - Mum's deterioration, his own illness and the mess that their finances are in. It's been really tough.
But it's all out there now and we can start working with it and coming to terms with it in our own ways.
If you get a chance to visit, Dad would love it. But please, make it soon.....
Monday 21 April 2008
Sunday 6 April 2008
A sad weekend
This weekend, Mum went into fulltime care at St Andrew's House. She is not taking in that it is for good and thinks that Dad is going for a break into hospital. She has been told it's for a long time, but I've not doubt she's have her stuff packed and unpacked at least twice a day for as long as her mind allows her to.
She has no grasp of the reality of how serious it is for Dad and has no emotional response to the news that he is terminally ill. Fronto temporal dementia is a cruel illness.
Packing up her things for her to take with her, was very sad. Going through her personal things, picking what I thought she would like to take was particularly heartbreaking. Especially finding all the special things she'd hidden in her sock drawer. Small things that were significant to her, but meaningless to many other people - old photos, dance shoes, her stamp collection (did she collect stamps??), touching letters from us when we were children, old penny collection and war memorabilia from her Dad.
She is settling back into St Andrew's House well. When asked how she's finding it, her answer is 'awful' - her stock response to any question on how things are! It's one of the limited number of words she has left.
But she is relaxed and is clearly fond of the staff (maybe not the other residents!) and is responding well to the routine and support she receives there.
Importantly, she is safe and well looked after by good team of people who can manage the job. It's a relief that she is there.
Dad's immediate response to this new situation is relief, but he's got a grieving process to go through and I'm not sure he's had the space to do this yet. His stay in Ninewells begins on Tuesday 8 April and Graham will take him up there on Tuesday morning. Before then he has many affairs to get into order and will probably be too busy to notice that Mum's not there.
He is getting another endoscopy to see how far the throat tumour has progressed on the 22 April. Once the results are back from that, he will make a decision to either proceed with surgery to remove the tumour or allow the cancer to take its course. He will probably be in hospital for a few weeks and then who knows......
She has no grasp of the reality of how serious it is for Dad and has no emotional response to the news that he is terminally ill. Fronto temporal dementia is a cruel illness.
Packing up her things for her to take with her, was very sad. Going through her personal things, picking what I thought she would like to take was particularly heartbreaking. Especially finding all the special things she'd hidden in her sock drawer. Small things that were significant to her, but meaningless to many other people - old photos, dance shoes, her stamp collection (did she collect stamps??), touching letters from us when we were children, old penny collection and war memorabilia from her Dad.
She is settling back into St Andrew's House well. When asked how she's finding it, her answer is 'awful' - her stock response to any question on how things are! It's one of the limited number of words she has left.
But she is relaxed and is clearly fond of the staff (maybe not the other residents!) and is responding well to the routine and support she receives there.
Importantly, she is safe and well looked after by good team of people who can manage the job. It's a relief that she is there.
Dad's immediate response to this new situation is relief, but he's got a grieving process to go through and I'm not sure he's had the space to do this yet. His stay in Ninewells begins on Tuesday 8 April and Graham will take him up there on Tuesday morning. Before then he has many affairs to get into order and will probably be too busy to notice that Mum's not there.
He is getting another endoscopy to see how far the throat tumour has progressed on the 22 April. Once the results are back from that, he will make a decision to either proceed with surgery to remove the tumour or allow the cancer to take its course. He will probably be in hospital for a few weeks and then who knows......
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