Merry Christmas.

A whole month since I last posted here. No I haven't left you but it has been so hectic here I haven't had chance to write. and now I do it's yet another tale of woe.

My Mother in Law who is 89 has had to move into full time care this week after 9 months of in/out/in again hospital care and a continuing saga of 'events' which have had to be dealt with by family, district nurse, doctors or whoever depending on their nature. Finally the GP has said she is not safe at home mostly due to her refusal to accept appropriate help. The strain on the family has been immense and when she has been home it has been a near full-time job for 3 people. Luckily my input was mostly on the catering front so a little easier to cope with although it has felt odd this week not to be getting up at 7.30 and cooking. Three mornings a week since March I have cooked dinners, 2 on each of 2 days and 3 on a Friday. Full meals with hot puddings and custard which could then be cling filmed, labelled, taken 3 miles and then re-heated by the lunchtime carer.

I got quite organised producing batches of puddings and stews and the like which I then froze, so I could provide a variety of different home made dishes. Now we need to eat our way through all the ones remaining in the freezer, an awkward task as they are such tiny portions and WH will need 3 tubs of stew to feel like he has eaten anything.

Meanwhile we will be having a very odd Christmas, visiting Mother in Law and spending most of the day just the two of us, just youngest stepdaughter popping in for tea and to collect her presents. The main family are coming here on Boxing Day. Just as well it will be quiet really, I have a really bad dose of Bronchitis, picked up on one of the numerous hospital visits. Immuno-compromised by the methotrexate I left it a bit late to go and get antibiotics from the GP so now I am really suffering. At least cooking for 2 will be a doddle but we can always have a hot pudding from the freezer if it all become too much!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Interlude

It has been a frantic week mostly spent dealing with an elderly woman who is determined to starve herself to death. She neither wants to eat nor drink nor let anyone help her. It is sad. After discharge from hospital last week things got worse. Today it all came to a head and finally a patient, kind district nurse with the temperament and voice of a sergeant major finally got our lady moving again and mobilised the troops so from tomorrow the long suffering family will not have to cope alone. My sister in law is beyond words, barely able to speak after daily, in fact hourly battles of wills, unable to fathom how someone could let themself go in this manner. Serious illness has been ruled out. A perverse desire to be supremely awkward is the consistent diagnosis.

Meanwhile I have taken refuge in my genealogy, odd moments at the ends of the days where I can think about something else. I was researching some Romany family. Well what a surprise that turned out to be and no picnic either. It seems amid the depths of the message boards and history web sites, dark forces are lurking and nasty comments and messages lead to massive fallings-out, board wars and worse. Some sites have all but closed. People I thought were friendly are revealed in their full-blown nastiness. I can't believe the things that were said about squabbles several years old and obviously involving people who know each other away from the internet. I am sad, disillusioned and disheartened and began to wonder if it was all worth it. I had some of my work plagiarised in the past, in one instance several years ago a whole family tree I passed to someone for their perusal suddenly turned up all over the net. A couple of more recent things have turned up too but nothing on such a scale as then. Discussing this recently in general on a website I was astounded to be almost hounded to say who had done it. It seemed my interrogator had a guilty conscience but I desisted from getting involved. This then followed me to another website where I had seen none of the embattled for days and was gaily chatting about something completely different. Those who did get involved were followed all over the net by individuals who feel that they have an axe to grind and a point to make but their logic and grammar is so hard to follow, no-one can really tell what it's all about. I don't care, it was the principal that was at stake and in future I won't be sharing anything.

So genealogy hasn't given me any respite at all. One thing that will however begins tomorrow, we finally return to Greece and our lovely Kalamos. The weather there is 30 degrees and sun is forecast for weeks. I'll think of you on the beach on Wednesday. See you in June.

What I saw in hospital

Mother in law is in hospital, admitted over a week ago for a blood pressure reading so much off the scale that the first doctor thought his machine had broken, we had really taken her in to have a suspcted fracture investigated. 4 days later a fracture in a bone in the wrist was reported along with the statement that they 'wouldn't be doing anything with it as it appears not to hurt her'. Meanwhile we waited 6 days for a 24hr heart monitor which we were told on admission would be required. On Saturday came the news that the heart test was fine but they couldn't do any other tests now because of the Bank Holiday, the doctor would probably order some more on his return on Tuesday. If pat experience tels us anything then it will be Friday before these tests are carried out. By then MIL will have been 'in' 2 whole weeks. No wonder they are short of beds. The whole NHS process grinds slowly on with no sense of urgency or even regard for the patient's well being. We have ben concerned about her lack of eating and drinking. No-one encourages her to do either outside of the family who have devised a rota to ensure there is someone present at the evening meal time. the main meal of that day is at lunchtime and visiting is not allowed. Daily she reports she 'ate nothing/ didn't like it/couldn't be bothered' or even on a couple of occassions 'didn't get any pudding/they forgot me/I didn't have a fork'. Add this catalogue to the day I discovered a jug of water out of arm's reach and no glass no wonder this lady is losing weight and de-hydrated.

A request to the ward sister to monitor her eating and drinking as we felt this to be a problem resulted in a lovely record sheet being pinned to the bottom of the bed first thing in the morning. There were columns for description of food/drink, amount given, amount eaten and overall comments. Trouble is at 5pm the whole sheet was blank, no one had bothered to use it.

If the NHS were school project the marks would be as follows:

Knowledge: 5/10

Interest in subject: 1/10

Effort: 0/10

Some interesting ideas were put forward at the outset but the project failed to follow through and almost no written work was submitted for evaluation. Must try much harder.

OK, I joke but this is an elderly lady's life at stake here and from where I sit no one is very interested at all.

Nothing to say

Sorry I've not been around but I really have not much to say. I've had a hellish few weeks with some new meds and I've been asleep for great parts of them.

I've also been stuck into the family tree seeing as I couldn't do much else and by the time you've ploughed through 50 plus census sheets and re-examined them with the magnifying glass, the last thing you want to do is peer at at a pc screen.

Mother-in-law is not too well now, she's very frail so I'm doing meals-on-wheels for her on a daily basis. 7 days a week. She has 3 daughters but funnily enough they're not very forthcoming with extra help. Thank goodness for No 1 daughter who picks up the dinner on a school day and delivers it to the recipient in the next village on her way past.

And I lost my cleaner, the wonderful Ms T, she had so much on her plate she's had to give up work. I'm going to miss her dreadfully especially at the moment when I'm doing my own cleaning (and ironing which is the real killer).

So just a few snippetts of random information but nothing very exciting, I have only been out twice in 3 weeks after all.