Getting old

[Mahlerei]

The hospital said mum was in the early stages of dementia when she was actually suffering from a severe infection that left her confused and disoriented. Once that was cleared she was pretty much her old self, but I remember the sense of foreboding when that misdiagnosis was made.

Trouble is, mum sits at a table with several residents who do have dementia and she finds that very distressing as they become argumentative; she's had to leave the dining room on occasion and eat in her room, as she gets so upset.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

there are some positives ... EA shows the benefit of music, my pal [swmbo] sings in a group that performs for care home residents .... with much conflicted debate about the presentation and choice of material versus what the punters seem to relate to!

...and if there were a referendum on assisted endings i would vote in favour i must say .... maybe that vote should be restricted to the over 60s?

[Dave2002]

The hospital said mum was in the early stages of dementia when she was actually suffering from a severe infection that left her confused and disoriented. Once that was cleared she was pretty much her old self, but I remember the sense of foreboding when that misdiagnosis was made.

That's not good. Older people often get infections which can leave them confused. Quite frequently these are urinary tract infections. These can probably be solved by rehydration and antibiotics. Also, if people start to get confused, for whatever reason, their personal hygiene may suffer, increasing the risks of infection. It's really important for family andr friends to know this.

Actually this is one area where a good care or nursing home can help, though many older people want to try to maintain their independence, and this can lead to them not always being able to look after themselves adequately.

If possible I think older people should try to avoid being hospitalised. Hospitals are of course necessary, and can be helpful, but very often it seems to me that hospitals finish people off by giving them a series of problems of increasing severity, and often worse than what they were initially admitted with.

[handsomefortune]

> often worse than what they were initially admitted with. <

coincidentally, i was chatting to a nurse on saturday at a function. she apparently works at an nhs isolation unit, especially for patients who are suspected of contracting mrsa, c dificile etc. she would agree with your post, i think, dave2002.

i also have a sister in law who's a nurse, but in the US. yet, her 'role' is apparently to make us feel guilty and useless, usually via unhelpful telephone calls. (but this far, not 'guilty' for long) for following my dad's instructions as to whether a hospital is required, or not ....apparently, this is because we are 'unprofessional' in our attitude, and care. that is, rather than sensitive to my dad's personal requests, sense of autonomy.

touch wood .... recently, 'we've' just got through a double infection (water/pneumonia), with nothing more 'professional' than a visit from ambulance + gp. obviously, many thanks to both, from all! my dad was temporarily delirious, rather than having dementia. happily, both nhs gp, and ambulance crew respectively, were excellent in their care.

frankly, both me and my mum are thankful that hospitalisation wasn't chosen. who wants to trot to hospital and back, to do repetitious hygiene, food, liquid intake checks, that only take 2 mins at home? we just actually need to have my dad onhand, not miles away, in order to be vigilant and provide support. in addition, and perhaps more essentially, we are not upping the odds of complications relating to nhs ward viruses. why did my sil not think of these aspects, as an inlaw, and as a professional?

imo modern day nurses are a very mixed bunch. evidently, 'nursing' can mean all sorts of things, and increasingly, greater $s in the private sector, is achieved by avoiding manual care of people all together. instead, sitting at a pc + telephone, 'managing' repeat drug/prescription cycles earns you a good salary/pension. whereas actual caring does not, and perhaps this is a seriously contagious attitude, as dangerous and unhealthy as any biological virus? yet ironically, if i related the same to my sil, she'd probably accuse me of being 'demented'! however, i did enjoy the nurse i met on saturday, whose impersonations of herself looking in on patients at the isolation unit. she showed me how to *talk minus breathing*, which is actually pretty funny, and humour usually counts for an awful lot generally....both in sickness, and in health.

[Serial_Apologist]

> often worse than what they were initially admitted with. <

coincidentally, i was chatting to a nurse on saturday at a function. she apparently works at an nhs isolation unit, especially for patients who are suspected of contracting mrsa, c dificile etc. she would agree with your post, i think, dave2002.

i also have a sister in law who's a nurse, but in the US. yet, her 'role' is apparently to make us feel guilty and useless, usually via unhelpful telephone calls. (but this far, not 'guilty' for long) for following my dad's instructions as to whether a hospital is required, or not ....apparently, this is because we are 'unprofessional' in our attitude, and care. that is, rather than sensitive to my dad's personal requests, sense of autonomy.

touch wood .... recently, 'we've' just got through a double infection (water/pneumonia), with nothing more 'professional' than a visit from ambulance + gp. obviously, many thanks to both, from all! my dad was temporarily delirious, rather than having dementia. happily, both nhs gp, and ambulance crew respectively, were excellent in their care.

frankly, both me and my mum are thankful that hospitalisation wasn't chosen. who wants to trot to hospital and back, to do repetitious hygiene, food, liquid intake checks, that only take 2 mins at home? we just actually need to have my dad onhand, not miles away, in order to be vigilant and provide support. in addition, and perhaps more essentially, we are not upping the odds of complications relating to nhs ward viruses. why did my sil not think of these aspects, as an inlaw, and as a professional?

imo modern day nurses are a very mixed bunch. evidently, 'nursing' can mean all sorts of things, and increasingly, greater $s in the private sector, is achieved by avoiding manual care of people all together. instead, sitting at a pc + telephone, 'managing' repeat drug/prescription cycles earns you a good salary/pension. whereas actual caring does not, and perhaps this is a seriously contagious attitude, as dangerous and unhealthy as any biological virus? yet ironically, if i related the same to my sil, she'd probably accuse me of being 'demented'! however, i did enjoy the nurse i met on saturday, whose impersonations of herself looking in on patients at the isolation unit. she showed me how to *talk minus breathing*, which is actually pretty funny, and humour usually counts for an awful lot generally....both in sickness, and in health.

And there is the added complication that if one does the caring the staff are supposed to do, this will be letting them off the hook!

Hope you dad soon gets well, handsome...

[MrGongGong]

...and if there were a referendum on assisted endings i would vote in favour i must say .... maybe that vote should be restricted to the over 60s?

and you would REALLY trust the "professionals" to be able to implement such a thing without making horrible mistakes ? aside from any moral or even religious concerns it's blatantly obvious that we are completely unable to care for the most vulnerable people in our society consistently and empathetically.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If possible I think older people should try to avoid being hospitalised. Hospitals are of course necessary, and can be helpful, but very often it seems to me that hospitals finish people off by giving them a series of problems of increasing severity, and often worse than what they were initially admitted with.

My father was admitted to a hospital when he was 90 years old. He was on medication for many things and it was important that this was maintained during his stay in hospital. But the staff simply didn't listen and it was downhill from there. Should I name the hospital on a public forum? Perhaps not. But think of a hospital in the Stockport area that has been in the news recently...

[Stillhomewardbound]

I just hope the garden fence can take the weight of all these exchanges [says he, as he makes a Norman Evans like adjustment to his corsets].

Yes, Dad was forever picking up urinary infections and tripping out for a time, and as others have found it can be very disconcerting.

Then there was the year where he'd become a piriton (anti-histamine) junkie. Problem was he was on warfarin for a heart complaint and he would get terrible itching through all of this, hence the Piriton. However, unbeknownst to us, he was popping them back like smarties.

Eventually we cottoned on to this and got the doctor to review his medication also. Within a short time it was like he had come back to us again, his lucidity restored.

The virtue of our times is that there are pills and remedies for virtually everything, however, so often each has a side affect which needs to be counteracted by another medication. That then sets something else off and on it goes.

However, for all the cloudy days of both my parents being very ill there'd be wonderful shafts of sunlight. Like the time the doctor asked my mother to pop into the smallest room across the hall so he could test her hearing. But, she remonstrated, how would even a young person hear him through two walls?

Exasperated, he said, to test your urine Mrs.McKenna? But, er, when you come back perhaps we had better test your hearing also.

Or there was Dad's last roar day's before his passing. He was very poorly and almost incomprehensible at times, however a rather inept doctor was attemping to get a blood sample from him (not being unfair but I think we can all spot someone making a hash of things) and she was prodding and poking until my dad had had enough and out came this roar, clear as a bell, and every bit the stentorian actorial presence "WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?".

My brother and I looked at each other with big smiles on our voices, delighted to hear that voice that had filled many a theatre once again.

I go over these moments in my mind time and again, not because I relive the upset, but rather the contrary. Through both our parent's sad misfortunes in health we'd spend more time with them than we had in years and it was a source of relief to be able to help them a little and ease their discomfort such as we could.

SHB

[Mahlerei]

Mum had a pacemaker check today - the appointment was made ages ago - and when we got to the hospital their records were incomplete so no adjustments were possible. And this within a single NHS Trust. A wasted journey and an unnecessary strain for mum. I despair sometimes.

[Dave2002]

Re the sometimes quick recovery from infections - that's good news. However many GPs do not follow up on this. I know some very good doctors who will check their patients out regularly - say once a year. Others are happy to leave their patients for years on end. My father had one or two incidents, and was even admitted briefly to hospital following a fall, but neither the hospital nor the GP really followed a few of these incidents up properly. The consequence, sadly, was that when we finally found out that he did have a problem, bowel cancer, after a few tests it was decided that it was inoperable. The surgeon was clearly able to save others, so it was sad that this was not picked up before it was too late. I am glad for the other patients of that surgeon though, but it's a lousy system which doesn't pick up when people have such problems in time.

[Petrushka]

Dave2002: My mother was diagnosed last April with vascular dementia following years of untreated diabetes. This was depite regular GP check ups and opticians appointments. The underlying cause should have been found and treated long ago. During a stay in hospital after what the doctors called 'a vacant episide' (she had passed out with what was probably very low blood-sugar level) and as she was confused and aggressive, they gave her anti-psychotic drugs meant for schizophrenic patients. The care home were furious when they found out and immediately removed her from the hospital. It has taken some weeks for those drugs to be tapered down and eliminated from her system. She is now in a different care home and is feeling much better.

Anna: Yes, this thread does make for scary reading but I am so glad it was started because the past 6 months have been highly distressing and it has given a sort of comfort to know that virtual friends on here had similar experiences to relate so thanks to Mahlerei foe setting the ball rolling.

I hope that everyone else has, like me, received much solace from listening to music. The Proms were a god-send (the family insisted I went) and now that I know mother is in excellent hands a certain amount of peace has at last descended.

[Dave2002]

Just to cheer us all up a bit more, try listening to iPM from Saturday - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014lzfx. radio 4.

[Anna]

I heard that programme Dave flagged up. I thought the segment on leaving your body to medical research, as related by daughter whose mother had done so, very interesting. I was quite taken with the fact that I could be useful to others whilst technically dead. However, do the relatives have an ersatz funeral whilst waiting for the remains to be finally released by the Medics? The Professor said this could take either 3 months or perhaps 3 years. Would relatives want to have another funeral after this length of time?

Also, thinking of a very recent local death and funeral of someone who died aged 57, his wife and mother go every 2 days to the cemetery to have a talk with him, so that rather complicates matters further if you don't have the remains readily to hand to to that.

[salymap]

That's an important point Anna. Not about aging, but a cousin visits [or visited] his 15year old son's grave every day to 'give him all the news' and this kept/keeps him going on.

Perhaps it's lazy but I prefer to think of my parents and other loved ones as I remember them and never visit family graves or the crem. I think the last grave I visited was Beecham's in the beautiful wild Brookwood Cemetary in Surrey, before his widow moved him to Limpsfield, near Delius.

[Mary Chambers]

My parents both left their bodies for medical research. They took my father's, but not my mother's - not sure why. We didn't ask for remains to be released by the medics - we were given various choices. My brother and I agreed with our parents that bodies aren't important - they aren't the person in any real sense. We had a big family lunch a week or so after my father died - no funeral. It suited us very well. We had to have a funeral for my mother - if there was any option not to have one we didn't know about it. None of us were churchgoers or believed in any afterlife other than in the memories of those left, so it seemed all wrong to us.