Dad back at home

Dad has been back at home for just over a week now and we are getting used to the new carers who come in four times a day to wash and change him, see to his food, what little he is eating, and generally make him comfortable, In addition, we have carers from Hospice at Home and Marie Curie to stay the night with him, if they have someone available. They are usually only able to tell me if they can send someone during the early evening, so I don’t generally know until then whether someone will be in or if I will have to stay. If I stay, I sleep upstairs and have a baby monitor on in case Dad is restless or needs anything during the night.

The baby monitor is a bit of a two edged sword as it picks up every sound, which stops me sleeping or on the other hand, when he is quiet, I keep waking up and wondering why I can’t hear anything. Well, you can’t win ‘em all! The nights when someone rings up and says, “I’ll be at your dad’s tonight” are sheer bliss and I can’t thank them enough. I brought up four children with all the attendant disrupted nights and lack of sleep, but then, as Elder Daughter was happy to point out, I was thirty years younger then. These days, sleep eludes me all too frequently anyway (own personal heating system, creaky hip and knees etc)  and a good night’s slumber is both rare and precious.

Last night, Carol from Hospice at Home drew the short straw as Dad had a very disrupted night and barely slept at all, so much so, that she had to call on Out of Hours Marie Curie service to come out, resulting in his first injection of Midazolam to calm him down.

This is a steep learning curve.