Not Quite Florence Nightingale

I have a sneaky feeling that Mum is probably realising she has got the wrong daughter looking after her as my sister was the nurse and I did more geeky IT stuff so in my defence I would say that I am not the natural carer in the family but I am the one here so she is a bit stuffed really. 

I have checked with my friend Hazel that superglue-ing Mum's hearing aids into her ears would indeed be seen as elderly abuse but I can see no alternative if she continues to forget to put them in.  Today we set off for the hospital and having struggled to get the wheelchair into the boot I was all hot and bothered and then I realised she did not have the bloody things in - I should have realised after the umpteenth "Sorry?" when I spoke to her.  I reason with her that she remembers to put her glasses on so why doesn't she remember to put her ears in?  It is falling on deaf ears - literally!!!

Anyway we are both still alive - just.  Yesterday I went and picked up Lilian to join us for Sunday lunch.  I had encouraged Mum to get out some photographs so she could talk to Lilian about people and places from her past and bless Lilian she is great at encouraging Mum to chat.  That left me free to get the food sorted.  It is hard using someone else's kitchen and since Mum gave up cooking after Dad died there is no point asking her much about how the hob works or whether she has certain ingredients - it is best to assume not because even if she has they have often celebrated numerous birthdays in the back of the cupboard.  Anyway my quest to pump up her iron levels through her diet are hopefully working - time will tell but at least I know that whilst I am here she will be eating, like it or not!!!

I go to bed way earlier than Mum so I have been trying to stay awake longer but TV is an issue in that it has to be something Mum can hear, with out sex, swearing and violence which rules out most things really.  We sat through an adaptation of Agatha Christie's Ordeal by Innocence and I thought we might be on fairly safe ground but it had clearly been adapted for a much younger audience because I would hazard a guess that dear Aggie never used the F word in her life!  Mum fell asleep part way episode two - not sure if that was a good or a bad thing.  I think I managed to come up trumps this evening though when I managed to find a two hour long episode of McDonald & Dodds which is a Stand-Easy production - rather tongue in cheek with quite a star studded cast and not an F word to be heard.  I can see I shall have to find more if we are to have comfortable viewing for the remainder of the week.

Today Mum had a dressing change appointment at Paphos General and unbelievably I managed to drive straight into a parking space adjacent to where we needed to go and we went straight in and up to floor two and straight into the dressings place without having to sit outside and listen to anyone discussing their prostate problems which was a bonus.  Today we had Lena doing the dressing change.  She looked incredibly glamourous first thing in the morning.  She was good with Mum and answered all our questions and handed me a shed load of dressings and bandages, tape and gloves so that if Mum manages to have a shower but the outer dressings get wet I can replace them (although not the special ones directly on the wound which are covered in brown axel grease or whatever it is they are using).

We are to return on Wednesday to see the Doctor who will assess the progress and see whether or not any of the flap of skin needs to be removed.  So far so good though, it still looks awful as it is a livid purple colour but it is drying and the flap has settled down flat (save for the large section at the top where it had folded back on itself) and there are no signs of infection.  

Mum's reward for being a brave bunny was that I rustled up my take on Haloumi and Chips tonight (one of Mum's favourites) but with a large salad (no tomato, no cucumber, no peppers) so lettuce, carrot, orange, onion and nuts along with a couple of rashers of crispy bacon.  I could tell by the look on her face that this was more than she would have wanted to eat but she did all bar two bits of potato.  I think she was too scared not to give it a good go.