Dear blog

Before you read any further this will be a long personal post and not craft related at all, so feel free to leave now.

I just wanted to share with you our day today,which has a very long and quite sad back story and is a part of our current life as it today.

I am not going to go into detail over the history but I will briefly describe the last six months.
We have had to watch my mother in law who was once a kind loving lady and grandmother go into a very rapid dementia decline. We had noticed her gradually getting a little worse over the last year but six months ago we got her to the doctors as we were worried about her living alone. The test that the doctors did said she was only borderline dementia and ok to live on her own with help to do the cleaning ( we actually didn't agree with this as we thought she really couldn't live alone). The next week Nana (as I call her) had a fall and broke her hip. It has been a rapid decline since then. Her body is fine and her hip is great it's her mind that is not there. Unfortunately nana did not cope with the anaesthetic in hospital and this completely changed her personality. We were forever apologising to the nurses as nana would swear at them, hit them, bite them, be rude to them,it was a real awakening. The nursing staff could not believe that this 4foot 6inches sweet old lady could be so vile, strong and nasty.

Luckily our kids did not see any of this. Sure we told them the days happenings and how one day she verbally attacked Andrew ( my husband, her son, the only child that is looking after her) or how she threw her whole plate of dinner over the nurse and then went to throw the glass at Andrew ( I broke down when I saw this and left the ward, it took me about half an hour to stop sobbing) but let me tell you did I let rip when she attacked Andrew. We stopped going to the hospital daily after that it was to depressing, so went went weekly and approached her room on tiptoes as we never knew what she would be like.

According to the doctors her aggression can be common in old people after operations. Anyway nana was in hospital so long that she caught a super bug, so now we have an angry old lady with dementia and a superbug as by now they had diagnosed her with rapid dementia. Forward three months and nana is transferred into a secure dementia home. End of story you would think. No no no

After three weeks we get a phone call, dear sweet tiny old nana had hit another old person at the nursing home and they had called an ambulance for nana who was out of control.
Suffice to say nana had another lengthy stay in hospital. Then back to her beautiful new nursing home where everything has been going great, no anger, just nana, not our old sweet nana but a nana that doesn't know me, or the grand kids, can't remember where she lived etc, but she nearly always remembers her sweet dear boy Andrew.

Anyway fast forward to today which is the reason I write this post. Nana is back in hospital this time with a chest infection bordering on pneumonia and dehydration. We go to see her, our two children Caitlin 19 and Joe 17 come with us, we didn't even think what she would be like,after all they have seen her in the nursing home and they know that nana doesn't know who they are but they wanted to see her.
Health wise she didn't seem to bad to me a bit raspy but not too bad. However nasty nana was back, as we now know what to look for we could see it building up, building up, she had mumbled a few nasty words to the nurse and was just about to give her a whack at the same time looking at me ready to give me a mouthful
Andrew and I looked at each other and within thirty seconds we grabbed the kids and left the ward , me mumbling apologies to the poor nurse.

Now did we do wrong taking the kids with us, they were pretty shook up, we took them out to a late lunch to regroup and talk about what happened but now they will have this memory of their nana instead of the dear sweet one that spoilt them and did crafts with them, oh how I miss that nana.




This is nana today taken two weeks ago at her nursing home.

So that was my weekend and a glimpse into a part Of our life at the moment
If you made it to the end, i am sorry, blogs should be an escape for us all and you don't need to read depressing stuff like this. However it will be a part of my Project Life and as they say "life goes on".

So we are really looking forward to Penang in 2 weeks and 5 days not that we are counting.

Have a happy week
Xx

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