Last Tuesday I took Mum to have lunch with a friend.

Then I went for lunch with a friend.  And it was lovely.

But apart from that, last Tuesday was a tricky day.

When I got to Mum and Dads they’d had a letter from the memory clinic.  We’ve managed to get mum to blood test, ECGs and an MRI so that the clinic have everything they need to see her and I was expecting it to be an appointment.  I’d been warned it could be an appointment for 6 months time, but at least we were getting closer (And it’s suddenly important as after being told about 6 months ago when I asked about sorting this out that ‘it wasn’t needed really while your Dad is around’, I’ve now found out that without a diagnosis we can’t access a lot of the support out there that Mum is starting to need.  And nobody can provide any medication other than the clinic, after diagnosis).

But the letter said:

‘We currently have a much longer waiting list than usual for our memory assessment service.  Regrettably this means we are unable to offer you an appointment at the moment.  We appreciate that this is perhaps not what you were expecting to hear.  Please know that we’ll be back in touch as soon as we have an available appointment for you.’***

I decided that we needed to do our own things to help Mum instead, so in Tesco I started looking at children’s puzzle books.  Mum asked ‘Why?’ and I told her that I thought it would be a fun thing to do together. She said she absolutely would not do a puzzle even if I bought it and refused to move herself or the trolley until I moved away without the book.  And it makes me so cross that it seems like she doesn’t want to help herself. (And yes, I can do all the therapy to understand why she would feel that way, but I couldn’t stop my cross feelings.)

Later I offered to look at the pubs online menu with her to decide what she would like for lunch when she got there.  Mum got cross because I was interfering and said she COULD READ.  (She can’t).  More crossness.

Mum and the shoes she told me she’d put on ‘inside out’.

Then she got panicked about being late, so we got there really early and she refused to get out of the car until she knew her friend was already there even though I was going in with her.  She stopped talking to me when I (crossly) said she had to get out as I couldn’t see if her friend had arrived until we got inside…

So all that made me cross.  But I think mostly it was the memory clinic issue that kicked it all off.

Tuesday felt like I was being propelled downwards very fast, with no up insight – more log flume than rollercoaster.

On Thursday last week Mum had an appointment with her oncologist.  Before covid and before her stroke she had been diagnosed with her fourth different type of cancer – lymphoma. This appointment was to see if she was in the clear.  In the car on the way there, Mum wouldn’t talk to me as I’d driven the motorway route to the hospital and she had wanted to go ‘her’ way.  When I asked if she’d chat to me she told me that ‘it’s a no talking day’.  So we drove in silence until she recognised the road and directed me (correctly) to the car park).

Mum pointed out the consultant to me.   I wondered if she was right as he looked very young but the man next to me confirmed it was him.  ‘We call him ‘Elvis’.  He told me.

The doctor was a skinny black man, about seven foot tall; I wondered if he was an impersonator on the side or maybe sang Elvis songs to his patients as he examined them.  When he called us in I asked ‘why do they call you Elvis?’

‘Um…because it’s my name’

I mean…obviously 🤦🏼‍♀️

So, Elvis gave mum a practically clean bill of health – at this stage post chemo, the cells are unlikely to reawaken from their dormant state so she is officially in remission.  He looked at her bloods and pointed out that she is also pre-diabetic too, but I think we’ll pick our battles; at this point and that isn’t one we’re willing to spend time on – we’d rather get the woman to drink a bit of water occasionally.  Demonstrating the level of battle it would be , Mum informed both of us that ‘I don’t eat much sweet stuff anyway’. (She’s obviously forgotten that I do their shopping and know exactly how many bars of chocolate and packets of biscuits she makes her way through a week!)

When we left I asked her to do a ‘hooray’ pose for a photo.  ‘What are we hooraying?’ she asked.

She looked so happy when I reminded her – it was like getting to be the one to break the good news.  It’s a side of this horrible disease I’d not thought about – being able to get excited over and over about something because you forgot you already did that. Something  to celebrate on this rollercoaster of dementia. 🙂

***I called the next day.  Apparently, there are 100s of people waiting to be given appointments.  Those appointments are at the moment 3 months out.  It could be six months to a year before Mum is actually seen.  Plan B is now in progress.