The amazing news this Tuesday is that when I arrived, Dad was being seen by a respiratory nurse.

I didn’t know there was such a thing for people with COPD, but when Dad got really rather poorly in around July, I called his GP.  ‘You need to call the hospice’, they said. ‘He’s too poorly for us to help.’

I called the hospice. ‘You need to call his respiratory nurse’ they said ‘This is symptom management, not actual end of life stuff’.

‘What’s a respiratory nurse and how do I get one for Dad?’ I asked  ‘He’ll have been assigned one when he was diagnosed, 20 years ago’ they said.

Only he wasn’t.  Or at any point since then.  The hospice did then call Dad and offer to visit to check on him after that, while I set out on a mission to locate this missing piece in Dads’ puzzle.

And that actually happened in only three months.  And I don’t know at this point if three months is good or if I am just totally demoralised by the amount of shouting and chasing you need to do to get anything to happen and my expectations are stupidly low.

Anyway, this nurse was brilliant – she told Dad his inhalers are old fashioned and she will request he is prescribed a shiny new one.  She was impressed by his oxygen saturation levels and then stunned by them when she did a lung functionality test.  ‘This is bad.  Very bad.’ she said.  But then brightened as she told us most patients with lungs as unhappy as Dad’s would be horizontal and on oxygen – Dad’s not even allowed oxygen due to his amazing levels.  Which is…kind of a good thing…I guess.  Swings and roundabouts and all that.

Mum, on the other hand was not so good.  She was rather grumpy about everything, struggled to steer the trolley, even at a snails pace at Tesco and there were very few things that she can find on the shelves even if we are standing in front of them.  She’s also started a fixation on when she is seeing specific people and asked about 332412347 times an hour when they will meet.  And ‘I wont get cakes because I’ll have one later with her.’ ‘No Mum, you’re meeting in two days so you can have a cake today if you want’ and ‘I wont have a coffee because she will be here soon’, ‘Again: Two days…’ (I did start off with nicer ways of explaining it but LORDY.  It.  Didn’t.  Stop. ).  Dad’s had that for a week.,  She met the particular friend this morning and I sent Dad a message to say at least there would be no more questions on the topic…but she’s moved on to when something else is happening now.  Poor Dad.

She couldn’t manage to walk to the park so I drove us…but it started to rain shortly afterwards and she wanted to go home.  There was a chance of rust after all 🤦🏼‍♀️

But it wasn’t terrible and Dad having his nurse is great news, so it wasn’t bad for a Tuesday 🙂

PS: Tank you very much to whoever sent me an article on dementia taken from the National Trust Magazine.  I’d love to get mum to the Forget me Not cafe at Knole – I just need to work out a very stealthy way to do it as she point blank refuses to go to that sort of thing…  I don’t know who you are as you didn’t put your name and there was no postmark on the envelope, but I am guessing you are here because of the content!