Carol talks about caring for her Mum and dealing with unexpected challenges

Hi everyone, it’s Carol here. I haven’t done a Dementia Diary for a while, I had a bad day yesterday, so I thought I’d do one now. I was up at 9.45 in the morning. My Mum’s recently had a fall and broken her hip so I’ve been looking after her quite a lot of my time and I guess it’s got me quite tired and drained. So anyway, I went round Mum’s, she’s been having a shower, as long as I’m there to help her to get in and get out. So that was the first job, help her, and just watch her whilst she has a quick shower in the morning. Then we had a potter around and some tidying up and just general putting things away and everything, emptying the rubbish. She’s in good spirits, she’s getting on really, really well for her age, she’s nearly 85. And then I’ve been trying to get her to do her own midday injections. She has to have an injection, because she had to stop her blood clotting tablets. So she done that, very proud, done her own injection. I didn’t have a very good night’s sleep, so I was feeling very tired and drained anyway. After I left Mum I went to do some shopping and we dropped some rubbish off to the tip, me and my husband and then we went home, for tea and a rest. So that was Tuesday 22nd May.
On Wednesday 23rd, again I had another bad night’s sleep, I don’t know why, I’ve been sleeping really really well, but recently I’ve been tossing and turning, keep waking up, going to sleep, waking up, going to sleep, so that’s not helping. So on Wednesday I was up at 7.20 and this day I going off to London to Recognition House with my husband, who’s my study partner for my daybreak trial appointment, it’s a tablet trial for dementia. So we dropped Tula, my dog off at my neice’s, arrived at Canterbury West train station. We’d ordered our tickets for both of us on line, so all we had to do was type in a collection code and it prints out the tickets, boom done easy. Then I realised I had the booking reference number rather than the booking collection number. So we searched, both of us on our phones, for the confirmation email which would have this collection number on but couldn’t find it. So after more searching on my phone I came to the conclusion that I’d deleted this email that I needed instead of the old one that I wanted to get rid of. So I had no way of getting the collection number, which meant I had no way of printing off my tickets. Time was running out, this took about 15 or 20 minutes, so we had no other option than to buy new tickets at nearly £66. Never mind, now all I’ve got to do is try to claim back for the duplicate unused ones, that’s going to be a multitask for me anyway. I also had a little meltdown in the train station. This happens to me when I get really, really stressed, so I guess I got really really stressed and ended up crying, quite embarrassing but anyway. I recently said to Brian I know this route now off by heart and its quite easy, and I could cope alone if he wasn’t well or something, but you know what, I guess not, not after yesterday’s episode. So that’s all for now. Bye.