Hair wash Tuesday

Posted on May 2, 2024 by thepogblog
  • Tesco: A small, uneventful shop where Mum forgot each item we were getting within seconds of going to look for it, but that is nothing unusual…
  • Celebratory ‘we did the shopping’ cake choice:Dad suggested no cakes this week 🤷‍  Mum and I revolted and bought two to share between us.  Mum suggested we eat them in the car so we didn’t have to share with Dad.  🤣 Tempting, but we didn’t…
  • Cooked:No time…see below:

Last Tuesday I thought I’d broken Mum and Dads hearts.  The previous Thursday I’d taken Percy – my three year old working cocker spaniel  – to visit to see how it would go (a previous visit when he was younger had resulted in dad sitting in Percy’s crate to avoid the…enthusiasm. 🤦🏼‍♀️)

It went amazingly well and it turned out the ‘you can bring him anytime you want’ they said as we left actually meant ‘please bring him back next time’.

Only I didn’t.  And they had even written on the calendar that he would be coming.  I felt terrible.

So, this Tuesday I drove the 50 odd miles to Kent with the window open as Percy likes to feel the wind in his ear floof and bops me on the shoulder if I close the window for any length of time…

Percy stayed with Dad while Mum and I did Tesco.  Percy growled and barked to protect Dad when a strange man walked in the back door (the strange man was actually painting the outside of the house, but Percy was taking no chances in his role of Good Boy) and was a Very Good Boy for the entire day.  Apart from the bit where he got slightly carried away helping me wash Mums hair…

We did ball throwing, bluebell walking, hair washing and chatting.

You can see it all in three minutes in this weeks Tuesday TV .

Ta dah!:

 

Posted in dementia, family, looking after Mum, memory, muddled life guide, stroke, Tuesday, Tuesday TV | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Introducing Tuesday TV (I’ll make you famous, Mum!)

Posted on April 25, 2024 by thepogblog

It’s been a while since a Tuesday post.

I went away.

Sister 2 took Mum away. (She is brave).

Mum and Dad went to see some friends.

I went on a Thursday instead (and it turns out that a change in day discombobulates us all), but this week we were back to…well, as normal as we get.

  • Tesco: Mum had not pushed a trolley in three weeks.  In celebration, she even got the tv magazine (normally I am dispatched to get it for some reason I’ve yet to fathom).  She did have a paddy when I suggested a new shampoo though.  Clearly change is not really optional even when it’s obvious you no longer need ‘highlight activating shampoo’ as post stroke, the only highlights going on are the natural ones, sometimes referred to as ‘grey’.  A bit of distraction over what biscuits she might like though, and she is all Herbal Essence’d up…
  • Celebratory ‘we did the shopping’ cake choice: Cinnamon bun.  I suspect these might be the regular ones – please see note above about change.
  • Cooked:Ham and cheese pasties (second time; no recollection from mum at all about the first time).
  • Music choice: Back to Abba.  We know what we like.
  • Afternoon home cooked treat: We sampled miniature versions of the pasties I made from the leftovers.
  • Tuesday blanket squares completed since last week: Six
  • Tuesday blanket square grand total: I have lost count.  This deserves a post in its own right as Mum has gone knitting nuts and decided I need to sew the shapes together now.  I started last week but ran out of time.  It’s looking good though, if a little…lets say ‘wonky’.

But there is other news.  The Thursday that wasn’t Tuesday that I went to visit, I started videoing Mum.

I’d had an idea we could do a podcast as our chats over cooking can be interesting sometimes.  But usually, there are just a few gems.  So, I thought if I videos I might catch some.  And lo and behold:

I asked Mum what she thought of the idea:

And that made me giggle.

So, I thought I’d just film some random videos each week, pop them on Instagram and / or Facebook and compile them here.  Mum seems to really like being videoed and it turns out she is a bit of an entertainer (who knew?!).  And I did tell her I’d make her famous 😉

I’ll see if it works.  If it doesn’t, I’ll stick to the writing, but for now, this was Tuesday:

😁

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Muddled Life Practical Tip (possibly!) – An untested idea

Posted on April 16, 2024 by thepogblog

I’ve had an idea.  I have no clue if it will work.  But it’s probably worth a try.

Mum is getting in more of a pickle with what’s happening when (not just day to day – also whether something planned for June is tomorrow or not).

Dad fills in a calendar in the kitchen but Dad’s handwriting has always looked a little like a spider took charge of the pen, and I don’t think Mum can read anymore anyway.

She’s also really muddled with names and whereas she used to try to find them hiding round the corners of her mind, now she gives up.

So, I’ve printed pictures of the key people in her life and colour coded them by drawing round them:

I’ve then got a week per page diary and used the colours and some terrible drawings to indicate when things are happening.

I thought doing this in some way, she might be able to follow what’s happening on her own each week without having to keep asking, which might make her feel a bit more independent.

She did have her own diary a while back to fill in herself, but she couldn’t write what she needed to, couldn’t understand what she had and often put the wrong thing on the wrong day anyway.  This is one me and my sisters can do for her (although we have all agreed that with our distinct lack of artistic skill we might be creating more questions than we are answering – we may have to delegate the drawing part to my niece Little Wisp who at nearly seven years old is better at drawing than all of us).

I also thought if she had the photos to hand it would help in conversations when she is trying to talk about someone whose name escapes her as she will be able to point at them rather than having to remember the name.

So here we have it:

A week on a page that we can fill in for Mum.

I’m really hoping this helps.  Honestly, I’m not sure it will as Mum is incredibly stubborn and often point blank refuses to try new things as ‘I can do it really’ and most recently ‘I’m only pretending I can’t remember’.  We’ll see.

Worse case my sisters and I will have a new place to doodle 🙂

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A letter to Mummy W

Posted on April 11, 2024 by thepogblog

Dear Mummy W,

You won’t be able to read this.  I don’t know when you stopped being able to read but I know when you look at words now you guess them based on context like a small child.

And if I read it to you, you’d probably not be able to follow because it’s too long and wandery, and while part of your mind loves going to long and wandery places these days, most often you get lost on that journey.

But maybe it’s not important whether you know these words or not.  Maybe what is important is that others do, and that hopefully they can gain the understanding that will allude you.

Because, Mummy W, I want to remind myself to capture you now before you fade any further.  I looked back at photos of my wedding today – not quite two years ago – and you were already fading then, but there was still a vibrancy there, colour, a gentle light behind your eyes.  That light still flickers and you shine through, but it’s already become dimmer, almost without us realising.

And that makes me sad.  For us, but for you too.  The frustration when you’re aware of this fading is almost tangible.  But more than that.  The way you are treated now by all of us – as an old lady who doesn’t understand much, infuriates you when you are aware of it.  But then, you are mostly an old lady who doesn’t understand much.  And isn’t it kinder to help you where we can, and risk that fury than not?

You were a beautiful butterfly.  As a child, a teen, an adult.  Even through the times when illness crumpled your wings a little, your colours always shone though, strong and determined, no matter what the odds.

It seems so unfair that after all those times you’ve fought to fly again, now you – your wings – are fading, so slowly.

I guess that is why I put old photos on each post I write about you now, Mummy W.  Because I want people to see the colour of who you were before so that they can see that there are still shimmers there; that you are still that butterfly inside.

And it isn’t lost on me that now, finally we have the time and (sometimes!) the patience for each other that we never had before.  I’m just sorry for both of us that it took this long and these circumstances; I hope we make up for lost time before you fade any more.

Maybe that is the message that I want to send with these words (and we all know this already, really):

Take the time now before you fade, before they fade.

And remember that our wings do not define us.  Always keep in mind that there is a beautiful butterfly inside all of us, however faded the outside might look.

I love you, Mummy W.

Love, Pog x

Posted in dementia, family, looking after Mum, memory, stroke | Tagged | 6 Comments

Same but different

Posted on April 9, 2024 by thepogblog

The other night as we were cleaning our teeth, I told Mr R my right nostril hurt.

Him: have you stuck something up it?

Me: Yes, an orange smartie.

Him: Really?

Me: No, of course not…………..I did once though.

And I told him how aged about seven, I’d gone to a party (possibly Katrina Cross’s) and the magic man (Mr McDowell, Dad of one of the big girls at school and the magic man everyone wanted at their party) had magiced golf balls out of peoples noses.  It was AMAZING.

And I thought probably my twin sisters (so young they were still sharing a cot at this point) would be equally impressed if I showed them.  Now, I loved Mr McDowell, but I know that magic was just tricks, not real magic, so I assumed that he’d somehow shoved those golf balls up peoples noses first without them realising, in order for them to ‘magically’ appear.

I did not have a golf ball (thank God, in retrospect), but… A ha!  I did have a small box of Smarties in my party bag.  The orange ones were my favourite, so it seemed only fitting to use that to wow the twins (I thought they were the best little people ever).

Before I walked into their bedroom, I stuck the orange Smartie up my nose and entered, ready to amaze.  But it tuned out I’d really shoved it up there. It wouldn’t come loose.

Oh God, I can still remember the panic.

And I had to tell Mum and Dad who…did not rush me to hospital.  No.

Once they had stopped laughing, they made me sit in the corner of the room with a hankie to wait for it to melt.

for some strange reason I must have gone to this party in my school uniform as this is the photographic evidence

Based on my hair, the party must have been quite an intense one 😂

Dad told me when I went hunting for the photographic evidence at their house that I was ‘quite distressed’.   I imagine I was…quite apart from the fact that I genuinely thought I might have a Smartie stuck up my nostril for the foreseeable future,  you only tended to get one orange one per small box.  What an absolute waste!

So, I told Mr R this story and there was a small pause before:

Him: I stuck a bit of fir tree up my nose once, when I was about the same age.

Me: Why?

Him: I think probably because I could.

Me: And what happened to it?

Him: I think it probably went up and back down my throat and I ate it.

So, there you go:  The same but different. 🙂

I’m pretty sure that this is not Mr R at the fir tree incident age but it is SO blimmin’ cute, I thought more people needed to see it because…that tie!  that tummy! that smile! that collar! and…oh lordy, that hair cut! 💜💜💜

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The master manipulator

Posted on April 2, 2024 by thepogblog

Norman, as you might know, is my cat.  Norman, is rather old, grumpy and terribly demanding these days.  He is soon to be 14 and while I know many cats live much longer, none of mine have.  So, I’ve been ready for the inevitable for a while, every time he behaves out of character.

Now, as older people can – intentionally or not – Norman can be a bit of a manipulator.  He sets things up to get Percy into trouble.  He refuses point blank to use the cat flap if he suspects anyone might be available to open the front door for him (he miaows, mimicking a REALLY irritating car alarm at a pitch that can we heard through all walls and doors until someone gives in).  And he will refuse to be moved from my pillow if he has decided it’s his for the night.

Right now, I am away with Mr R, the stepsons and the in-law Rs.  We are having a lovely time in a surprisingly sunny Norfolk.  Norman is being fed by a neighbour’s daughter.

About a week before we left, Norman decided to refuse to eat.  A few days before we left, – two days running in fact –  he fell off the windowsill of the front room where he sits doing his car alarm impression every ten minutes to be let in the front door.  Before waiting approximately seven minutes before doing his car alarm impression to be let back out.  And so the cycle continues.  And the day before we left he started walking strangely up the stairs, like one side of him wasn’t working right.  I jumped to the conclusion (which I don’t think was that extreme with the family history) that he might have had a stroke.

You need to know here that the thing Norman hates more than Percy and all the other animals he tries to take a swipe at as they walk past the end of our drive is going in the car.  I decided after a particularly harrowing trip a while back that unless he needs to be put out of any misery, Norman will not be visiting the vet again, as it does genuinely terrify him and takes him a few weeks to trust me enough to come anywhere near me again.  So, I wasn’t going down that route and knew the vet wouldn’t have time to do much before we went away anyway.

I hand fed Norman tuna in an attempt to restart his hunger.  He ate some, then just looked at me, in a sad sort of way.  Although when I left the container near him and walked away, I did see him help himself which made me a little suspicious, but mostly I was just happy that he’d eaten something….

Ultimately, I took what I thought was the most pragmatic option.  I was honest with the neighbour whose daughter is feeding Norman and explained that there was a small chance Norman would be falling off his mortal coil in addition to the windowsill ledge before we got back.  I said if this happened I would totally understand and there would be no blame whatsoever in their direction.  And then I had the really difficult part of the conversation:

Her: What do we do if that happens?

(We have no grass, just three tonnes of pebbles in our back garden, really rubbish soil that’s impossible to dig…and a very active foxes den the other side of our fence. I had anticipated this question.)

Me: Could I leave you a black sack and the garage key and pop him in there?

(She is very down to earth and we discovered we’re thankfully on a similar wavelength)

Her: Umm…yes, no problem.

But it turns out that the master manipulator has struck again and had been playing a long, complex game this time, because yesterday I got this:

I’ve always said it:  It’s a blimin’ good job Norman doesn’t have opposable thumbs or we’d be in all sorts of trouble… 🙂

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The pondering Tuesday

Posted on March 28, 2024 by thepogblog

Tuesday stats:

  • Tesco:  The biggest shop we ever did together.  Too much to do a trolley check which made mum happy.  She said I was allowed to drop the blue tokens on the donation bin at the end as a special treat, but then couldn’t quite bear to give up that bit of excitement 😉
  • Celebratory ‘we did the shopping’ cake choice: Cinnamon bun.  Edging into first place in the ‘possible favourite’ stakes
  • Cooked: Pog’s Pasta (with chicken, not actual Pogs)– x3 again because it turns out I have no clue how to cook for two people with tiny appetites
  • Music choice:  We tried The Moody Blues but Mum couldn’t remember their songs and I couldn’t sing along as I only know Nights in White Satin so we went back to Abba 🙂
  • Afternoon home cooked treat:  Mince pies (Mum and Dad cook sweet things together quite often, with varying levels or frustration / irritation from what I understand.  Mince pies are a favourite)
  • Tuesday blanket squares completed since last week: eight.
  • Tuesday blanket square grand total: 29

Mum’s stroke affected the right side of her body.  My sisters both know a fair bit about this sort of thing as they have worked with people who have had strokes and other brain injuries and Sister 1’s husband has had surgery for a brain tumour that resulted in a brain injury.  So they both knew when Mum had her stroke that she would favour the less affected side in all ways…but also in where she looked. I had no clue that – for example – if Mum had a beaker of tea on the table in front of her, she simply wouldn’t look to the right to find it – it was like a blind spot. In rehab she even had a special sleeve for her right arm to remind her it was there 😁

It improved over time though, and I didn’t think about it really.  Only this week I realised that whatever is on the right hand side of the pan when we cook never gets brown.  And if I tell Mum she always tells me that the pan is faulty / the cooker is faulty / I must stop interfering because she CAN DO IT!  I wonder if it’s the same thing…?  Or if it’s part of the dementia.  Or if it even matters….

Just wondering aloud here.

In other news:  She picked out the wooden spoon without hesitation again!  Hooray!  She couldn’t remember my name again, or the agreement to call me her ‘favourite daughter’ 😁, but baby steps and all that.

The Tuesday Blanket is growing:

I was even allowed to sew some more blocks together which was very exciting.  We’re trying to learn the colours of the wool again.  When my nephew was little and learning his colours, everything was ‘blue!’.  Mum seems to have lost blue though…and yellow and grey for the moment, but hey, if we can relearn ‘wooden spoon’ we can do anything….right? 🙂

Me and my mum…around 1976

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Ain’t nobody got time for that

Posted on March 25, 2024 by thepogblog

In the last few weeks I have:

  • Repeatedly forgotten words
  • Totally lost at least two days
  • Informed my mum that she is going for lunch with group of people including Mrs S.  Mum told me that wasn’t right.  I told her it was.  We discussed, me assuming Mum was just in a bit of a muddle.  Until Mum remembered enough words to remind me that Mrs S died last year. I’d totally forgotten.
  • Bought a birthday card for a lovely friend.  Totally forgot to write and send card – only realising two weeks later
  • Sent a card to another lovely friend.  And then discovered it was two months early.
  • Then found out I did exactly the same last year…🤦🏼‍♀️

And that’s just a few examples.  When I am with Mum I seem to progressively lose the ability to retain or articulate words.  She seems to think it’s very funny…

So, I have come to the only conclusion I could: that I have dementia by proxy.

And then this week I received a message from my GP surgery asking if I’d like to sign up for a Menopause Information Evening to discuss topics such as brain fog.

Obviously, I totally forgot to sign up.

So while I imagine that the menopause or peri menopause or whatever is far more likely to be the culprit here than dementia by proxy, frankly I don’t have the time for that sort of thing.  In the words of this amazing lady ‘ain’t nobody got time for that’ 😂

(Click to play and pop your sound on.  Warning:  You might end up with an ear worm)

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The chaotic cooking Tuesday

Posted on March 21, 2024 by thepogblog

Tuesday stats:

  • Tesco:  Mostly successful, although someone with a very full trolley beat us to the ‘nice’ cashier so we ended up with a man.  Luckily Mum approved of him.
  • Celebratory ‘we did the shopping’ cake choice: Belgium bun (did you know they have lemon curd in the swirl?  Nope, we didn’t either.  They either need more or none in my opinion as it was a bit ‘neither here nor there’ for my liking…)
  • Cooked: A variation on moussaka – see below for details – x3 (one for dinner, two for the freezer)
  • Tuesday blanket squares completed since last week: eight and a bit,
  • Tuesday blanket square grand total: 21.

I have some seriously exciting news:  If you’ve been reading for a few weeks, you’ll know that I have been attempting to get a few words back into Mums head.  I’ve agreed that she can forget ‘Pog’ is my name if she calls me ‘my favourite daughter’ instead.  This makes her laugh a lot.  (Sorry Sister 1 and 2 😂).  But one word I’ve become slightly obsessive about re-teaching her is ‘wooden spoon’.  Every week I hold it up and random times in the day and mum shouts entirely random words at it.

‘fork!’

‘duck!’

‘sausage!’

I mean, it’s quite funny on one level…

But this week while cooking, I nonchalantly asked her to get out the wooden spoon, expecting her to wave a fork / knife / scissors / potato masher at me, and without even pausing she picked it right out the drawer, first time.  I cheered.  Mum jumped.  It probably wasn’t the best reaction, but seriously – WOO HOO!

And we made moussaka.  Well, that may be a slight exaggeration.  Tesco had no aubergines (I imagine the people standing by when the Tesco man broke this news must have labelled me as ‘a little dramatic’ as I’m pretty sure I did a rather loud ‘oh no…the moussaka will never work now!’ followed by a bit of a gulp), but I pulled myself together and thought courgettes would probably work just as well and all seemed ok.

Until – post Belgium bun – we started getting the ingredients out to discover that there were no onions in the house.  Who has no onions in their house?  And if you have no onions, don’t you get some at the next shop…which we had just come back from? 🤷‍♀️ Anyhoo, I jumped back in the car and popped to the village shop for a particularly extortionate onion and got back to ingredient collecting, only to discover that there was also no garlic.  Luckily, as I’d noticed we were running low at home I’d grabbed some for myself in Tesco and retrieved a bulb from my car. (And now I’m wondering if I’m actually the odd one needing reserves of onions and garlic in my cupboards…)

That had to be all the chaos done though, right?  Wrong.  We peeled sliced and cooked the potato, we sliced and cooked the courgettes, we cooked the mince and added all the herbs, spices and wine and assembled two moussakas ready for the white sauce.  I turned over the recipe and realised…the ingredients listed tinned tomatoes and puree, but apparently you had to guess where to add them as they were never mentioned again.  We un-assembled the moussakas, put the mince back in the pan and added them in.  Mum giggling like a little girl all the time.  Me too if I’m honest.  I’m not sure at this point if we were edging towards hysteria.  We reassembled.  Only now there was more of the stuff, so we ended up making three.  Only now there wasn’t enough potato, so that was a bit sparse, but hey ho…

And then we thought bechamel sauce was a bit boring and mum fancied a bit of cheese to nibble on anyway, so she grated cheese – which a surprising number of lumps fell off that were ‘too small to grate’ so had to be eaten –  and finally popped it all in the oven.

And Dad came to investigate our progress just as it dawned on me that I should not have put even a teeny bit of lamb fat down their sensitive plug hole as I’d totally blocked the sink.

(Dad: if you’re reading this, I didn’t really…. I just needed you to sit down a bit longer in the lounge for no particular reason at all.  And the photo of the plunger is just there because I thought it would…add a bit of colour.  Yes.  No plunging was needed.  At all. 😬)

Anyway, we decided that ‘moussaka’ didn’t describe what we’d created.  With a few missing bits, a few added extras and the construction, destruction and reconstruction that had gone on, plus a fair bit of chaos it seemed more appropriate to call is a ‘Mumssaka’ 😀

And in Tuesday blanket news, Mum has started to freestyle her squares and they have additional rows of different stitches scattered in them.  They look great and the blanket is growing…although I am not allowed to sew the squares together as it created a bit of a muddle.  There has been a bit of grumping and some undoing of half-finished work and possibly a bit of knitting needle throwing in the last week, I’m told, but I think we all do those things occasionally, don’t we? 🙂

Mum, around 1984 with my sisters.

Posted in crochet, dementia, looking after Mum, memory, muddled life guide, stroke, Tuesday, Tuesday blanket, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The art of distraction tuesday

Posted on March 14, 2024 by thepogblog

Tuesday stats:

  • Tesco:  Successful, no crying and we got the ‘nice’ cashier
  • Celebratory ‘we did the shopping’ cake choice: cinnamon bun
  • Cooked: Fish pie x 2 (one for dinner, one for the freezer)
  • Kitchen music listened to: Simon and Garfunkel
  • Tuesday blanket squares completed: five and a bit

I think most people know that when someone has dementia you don’t correct their version of events.  So, if they think someone they care about is alive and well, when actually they aren’t, you don’t tell them or every time they are told the truth they have to relive that initial grief. That makes perfect sense.

And if, for example, Mum knows that she didn’t have a cake when we went for coffee a previous week, it really doesn’t matter that actually she sulked so much when I suggested sharing one that she definitely had one to herself.  Or that she hasn’t seen a particular friend that she saw two weeks ago for months and months, it’s not worth the argument involved in showing her the calendar to prove her wrong.

But sometimes it is really, really hard to just nod and agree.

This week while we were cooking Mum asked me what I’d been given for my birthday.  It’s not my birthday yet, which I reminded her of, but told her that I was very lucky because for Mother’s Day I’d been given flowers by Percy (cocker spaniel) and Norman (grumpy feline).  Mum sighed, looked a bit cross and said:

‘I didn’t get any flowers’.

I pointed to the kitchen windowsill and the hyacinths I’d bought two weeks before, the tete a tete I’d bought last week and the daffodils I’d bought for her while we were in Tesco an hour or so earlier.

‘That was not for Mother’s Day though.  I didn’t get anything for Mother’s Day.’

I couldn’t help it.  I pointed at the gorgeous vase Sister One had bought her, reminded her that I’d sent a Cornish pastie and cream tea hamper, and that Sister Two had taken her to the coast where she’d had a fantastic day out and ‘the best fish pie ever’.

‘Nope’ she told me crossly, crying a little. ‘That was for my birthday’.

I went through the (entirely different) gifts we’d given her for her birthday.

‘None. Of. That. Happened.’  (Mum uses punctuation when she’s cross in a way you can almost hear it.  It can be a bit scary, even when you are forty something).

I stood, wondering what to do – agree with events and move on or dispute them and potentially start an argument? (and know that she might only remember for a short while even if I did convince her)

And then, in that gap, as though it suddenly started to dawn that she might possibly have made a mistake, Mum grabbed her back, told me it hurt a lot and started crying.  I think her back does hurt sometimes, but I also think it is occasionally (frequently?) used as a distraction technique, most often in Tesco when she can’t find what she is looking for and is feeling very frustrated.  Well, two can play at that game:

‘I need some cheese grating for the top of the pie Mum, do you want to cut yourself a slice to nibble on and do that for me?’

And just like that, the tears stopped, the back was forgotten, Mother’s Day and birthday gifts were an irrelevance, and the cheese was found. It turned out quite a significant amount of nibbling was required… 😃

In the end, we made two rather good looking fish pies (probably not quite as good as the Mother’s Day fish pie, to be fair though) and we settled down to a bit of Tuesday blanket making.  I’m not allowed to sew the squares together yet as that might have been what caused the complication and tearful phone call last week, and Mum assured me she’d manage to make lots more this week as now she really does understand what she is doing.  We’ll see…

For now, I give you The Tuesday Blanket progress:

And a reminder to myself that I probably don’t need to worry about setting mum straight or not. I just need to have a plentiful supply of snacks around for distraction as required 😉

Mum – a bridesmaid (in her 20s, I think)

Posted in Cooking, dementia, family, looking after Mum, memory, muddled life guide, stroke, Tuesday | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment