Hello Again.
Following on from yesterdays blog, as the week progressed mum was very up and down. Out and about in the day was generally better than the evenings. She is seeming to need distractions of some kind all the time, whether it be a walk in the woods, food, music or TV. Becoming more and more like what I would imagine its like to have a small child.
Sarahs Mum and her Partner and her 99 year old Nan visited for the day midweek. Great meal in Holt which mum really enjoyed. Nan can't half put some food away too! Back to the caravan and again the disorientation and confusion..
The low spot of the whole week was when I came to dismantle the awning. Mum was in tears, almost a full on tantrum, crying and shouting unintelligibly. Just couldn't get to the bottom of it. Sarah had to sit in the caravan and try to calm her while I managed to pack it away. Seriously considered travelling home a day early but I really don't think I was fit to drive. Eventually managed to get mum off to sleep so we could both calm ourselves down too.
Need to seriously think about the holiday situation. Whether the stressed out times are outweighing the benefits of the break for mum. Fabia is taking mum for a weekend in the peaks in December, staying in a Hotel so it will be interesting to see the difference that makes.
Thats pretty much up to date with the holiday, so more tomorrow about rooms and words. Till then here's Mum talking to her new friend Billy.
Hello.
Its been a while.
I am afraid to report have become exceedingly lazy on the blog front, also on the development of dementiacarer.com. I seem to have lost myself in a world of really bad puns, quizzes and swear words on twitter for a month or two. Time to make a concerted effort I feel to get back into the swing of things.
Lets bring you all up to date with this post, and go into a little more detail tomorrow.
If you are a regular reader you may remember we intended to take Mum and old hoppalong to the south of France in the caravan. As it panned out the dog had to be put to sleep and the more we thought about it, it became apparent that Mum would not manage a two week multi location holiday so we had to unfortunately cancel the journey to visit my Godfather Lloyd and Kay and have a rethink.
We decided to take the caravan across to Norfolk to Kelling Heath caravan park for just a week. The park is lovely, situated in a beautiful forest, nice walks and views etc and has a pool to fuel mums rediscovered passion for swimming.
We arrived on Monday after a three hour drive in torrential rain to find the sun was starting to break through, lovely. After a few negotiations to find a pitch that wasn't actually under 3ft of water we settled on one near the showers and club etc. Levelled the caravan up and settled in for tea.
First night great. Mum absolutely knackered after the journey and a few little walks, slept right through.
Next day I decided to set up the awning to give us a some storage space. Mum stood in the door watching.."Stupid" "Whats that for" and other similar but unintelligible sayings. After an hour or so, all pegged out and looking good we decided to pop out to Holt. A lovely little town. Nice shops and excellent cake.
Return to the site, pull up alongside the awning and mum is clapping her hands, "lovely" "ohh thats so good" etc. Apparently she loves the awning now.
Second night not so plain sailing. Mum up and down a lot of times through the night, very unsettled, not distressed just a little confused as to where she was.
Won't go into too much detail about the rest of the week yet, suffice to say it was very up and down..probably on reflection more down than up this year. i think this may be our last caravan holiday. A pity when I think back to all the holidays mum spent touring Europe, even as far as Hungary with the caravan and now she really struggles with one night.
Anyway. Enough for one night. I am back into it now so more tomorrow. Till then, here's a lovely picture of mum enjoying a ride on a train.
