No news from the battle front this morning. The district nurse goes in first thing to deal with the insulin injection so now Mum and Dad will be getting up, hopefully having breakfast and getting settled for the day. Dad hasn’t phoned, so no immediate panic.
It would be good to have a day without an ambulance parked in the drive. Ironic really that today’s news headlines reported that the NHS are urging people to come to hospital with other conditions. Yesterday’s ambulance team actively deterred Mum’s readmission due to fear she’d be exposed to Covid-19.
Yesterday I got a call from the social services: we didn’t have to wait 28 days but a matter of hours. The coordinator said mum’s situation sounded “truly dire” and was clearly an unsafe discharge. We will get a daily living assessment from the SPA team as early as today. Once that’s been done and any adaptations have been decided, the social services will have a baseline for deciding on care.
Ominously, they said a risk assessment would have to be done to weigh the risk of people going into Mum and Dad’s home every day against their need for care. I sincerely hope the cavalry exist and will arrive soon. So far I’ve drawn a blank with private care providers.
I can’t help wondering what the ideal arrangement would be for Mum and Dad, or anyone in their situation. I would definitely have moved to Audley retirement village in Matlock. You buy your own property on site and can take a dog if you already have one. The monthly service charges are a bit steep but cover everything including utility bills, gardening, cleaning etc. There’s a pool, gym, bar and restaurant on site, plus classes and social activities. Hairdressers, and chiropodists are on hand. Most important, as you need more care, they have an excellent care team. Think I’ll book my place now!
Just had a call from the SPA team. They’re having a meeting now and will call me back now they’re aware that something more serious than a mobility assessment is warranted.
Stop press: Mum going back into hospital. She fell over getting up (not too badly but grazed her hand) so the district nurse took her oxygen levels and they were dangerously low (84%). She also has one quite swollen leg. A doctor came to make a home visit and they want her to have an x-ray/scan to rule out a blood clot on the lung or new chest infection.
The social services SPA person came just as the doctor was leaving, but she still had a look round and told me to call her as soon as Mum is discharged to get things moving with social services.
2022 and all that 