THE past week has brought home visits from two nurses.
I was not entirely sure why the first, an Admiral nurse, called to make an appointment, but suspect it had something to do with me crying, at the end of my tether, down the phone to our new GP.
I have yet to meet him in person, but he has been kindness itself since things have started “to get a bit much”, and I suspect his hand in the unexpected call.
“Doc to Angel 1 - we have a weeper. I repeat - we have a weeper…”
But I am desperate enough to clutch at any offered straw and although the reasons for the visit are unclear I have heard good things about Admiral nurses and wait with interest to hear what she can offer.
Lisa is bright and chatty, and tactfully pushes a box of tissues across to me when fat tears start to roll down my cheeks as I describe the strain of living 24/7 with dementia.
But she is also 18 months too late…
Yes, I do have a blue badge.
Yes, I do claim Attendance Allowance...and free nappies, a Council tax rebate, and home aids.
And year and a half ago, with James newly-diagnosed, I would have been glad not to have had to work out all this stuff for myself.
But although I am grateful for her present visit it is all too late to be of any real use - except that she promises to send me a Radar key to access locked toilets for the disabled.
So that, at least, is something...
Our second visitor, Blodwyn, is a dementia nurse who has come to see how James has been getting on with the Memantine he was prescribed six months ago.
I feel mean, but before she arrives I send up an urgent prayer that James will be having a bad day so that she can see how he really is.
There is no doubt that he has deteriorated badly in recent weeks, but even now, if increasingly rarely, he will surprise me with an occasional day when he seems relatively sensible.
But today, thank goodness, is not one of them…
Blodwyn is a no nonsense soul who spends her life with dementia patients, and if I am being completely honest I am not entirely sure that it isn’t starting to show…
She talks to us in a very loud slow voice, as though addressing small, deaf children whose first language is not English, and by the time she has been with us for an hour I feel utterly exhausted by her.
But she eventually works her way through her check list - and James fails to string two coherent words together.
“He has declined,” she confirms, as though I might not have noticed, “and in the next stage he may start to hit out, which you should be ready for...”
The gentlest of men, James has already on several occasions held up a balled fist to me, a gesture born out of frustration rather than malice: and three times recently he has simply refused to get out of bed, kicking out and hitting as I tried to get him up and clean.
But there is nothing more she can offer than an opinion.
James is already on the highest dose of Memantine that can be prescribed, and she just leaves with the advice that I am to ring her office if things get noticeably worse.
So when James offers me a cup of tea later on, the only thing he can still do, I have to hold back the tears as he hands me a mug of cold milk with a desultory tea bag floating in it.
Hugs to you, my dear Georgina, from across the big pond. I wish I could sit with him for a bit, and offer you some respite (and a hot cup of tea, but you'd have to teach me!).
Thanks Sue - just trying to take each day as it comes right now…x