Update

Well where do I start. It is some time since I posted as life has been hectic. As you know my other half got made redundant after 30 years service on the Friday before Christmas, so that did not get us off to a very good start for what was supposed to be a holiday break for us.

His mother had been taken ill at the beginning of December, then spent two weeks in hospital with what turned out to be heart failure, and then catching the norovirus. So this meant we were not able to visit and they eventually closed the hospital for a couple of weeks whilst they tried to get the virus under control. We collected her from her home as she was visiting us all over Christmas. This lead to her staying a month as she was too sick to go home. We discovered that there had been no proper discharge plan and her doctor had not been notified she was going home. Her other son is not capable of looking after her, so we found her weak and frail, not eating and with a the memory of a sieve. This lead to issues over medication and we have finally got her doctor to agree to a nomad pack, although some days she does not know what day it is, so there is still the danger of over or under medicating. We took her back home and now phone her on a daily basis to check she is ok.

Whilst she was here she saw our doctor a couple of times, and we have severe memory issues with her. She had completely lost her sequencing of thoughts, could not remember if she had eaten or taken her medication. Did not remember going out to a New Years Eve party and so on. I work with people who have dementia, but believe me it is far different when you are living with it and mighty hard work. How many times can you be asked the same question and still be smiling?

Later today we are going to look at a house that has a granny annexe, with a view to her coming to live with us.

In amongst this the other half is job searching, and being dragged up to London for interviews, only to find that the majority of them are Life Coaches who want to relieve him of a sizable chunk of his redundancy pay to show him how to get a job. Well, as that is what I did for many years before moving into the care sector, I got the fealing that was money wasted, and that we could better use for ourselves.

I have found the whole thing hard as it completely changes your routine and with his self confidence at an all time low, makes you feel you need to walk on eggshells.

Still the good news is that he has a 3 month contract starting Monday, that will give him more to put on his CV showing how flexible and well rounded he is. (of course they can see how well rounded he is, must get down to our diets now that we have lost some of the stress we have been under). We will then take a two week break at the beginning of May. We have a holiday place in the New Forest - nothing swish, but a good place for a retreat, and then hopefully there will be something else in the pipeline for him. His agent thinks that there is quite a lot of contract work around at the moment due to the financial crisis and the work he does is to do with computer compliance amongst other things, so we shall wait and see.

Mary