Gardener’s pie

I hope all my UK readers are safe and dry after Storm Chandra swept across the country last night. We’re fine, although mum will need a boat to cross the lawn to feed the birds if it rains much more.

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One of the first things mum said to me this morning was “I feel so much better – I think the medication is finally working”. Less than five minutes later, she all but wailed “I’m in so much pain, when is the medication going to work?”

I asked “didn’t you say you were feeling much better?”

“Yes, and?”, responded mum.

And there, in a nutshell, you have the experience of caring for someone with Alzheimer’s. It’s not the memory loss that’s the issue: yes, it’s annoying having to repeatedly explain mum’s health problems to her (particularly when she replies with irritation “you’ve told me that before”), but I can cope with it.

What’s frustrating is the weird way mum’s brain works now, from this sort of contradicting herself to the occasionally strange things she does, like getting a pair of tongs to pick up a slice of cheese when she had a perfectly good fork in her hand. (Or even her fingers: we’ve never been fancy enough to mind that sort of thing.)

There’s also the fact that mum isn’t always good at distinguishing between what’s on television and what’s in real life. Several times, I have been wracking my brains trying to work out the identity of ‘a visitor’ she’s describing, only to eventually realise that she’s talking about someone she’s seen on television. At some level she knows that she doesn’t really know these people, but I can understand how she gets confused when she sees the tv presenters far more often than she sees her real-life friends.

(And don’t get me started on that topic again. I know people have their own lives to live, but surely seeing friends is part of those lives? And if you don’t make an effort to see / talk to those friends, are they really friends?)

Dinner was gardener’s pie, which is a fancy name for mixed veg in a cheese and mustard sauce topped with sliced potatoes and more cheese. Mum really enjoyed it, rather to my surprise. I definitely must stick to vegetarian meals as far as possible, as mum does seem to enjoy those most.

Tomorrow the lovely Lil will be coming in to do a much-needed clean. I must remember to ask her to hoover mum’s bedroom curtains, which mum has been asking me to ask Lil since before Christmas. 😬 Hopefully mum will be feeling better, or at least less complain-y, by then: I actually told mum today how much she complains and she looked very offended, so I won’t be mentioning that again!