A few things worth mentioning have happened this week.

Rachel and I took mum and dad to see Dr Humerus on Tuesday. While Rachel chaperoned mum, I tried to keep dad satisfied about what was going on. At the end of mum's appointment, she and Rachel emerged from the surgery as dad and I went in. Mum was agitated and, upon seeing dad coming in, decided she was not leaving, so she sat trembling in a corner as the doctor focused on dad. The doctor asked dad some questions which had been answered in the notes Rachel and I faxed to her the day before. Dad gave contradictory answers, and thereby played his hand. We decided we would augment dad's Aricept with Ebixa. The doctor was keen to try it, I have no objections unless it proves troublesome, and dad will do as he is asked. My candid assessment is that we will never know what the effects of the Ebixa-Aricept combination are, unless there is an obvious improvement.

The unspoken conclusion, of course, is that mum is a lost cause.

Her incontinence has become daily, and we are all now checking her bedding on every visit. When I turned up at about 6:30 pm on Thursday, she was already in bed, but got up at the sound of my voice. I checked and found that the bed had been wet the night before. Not only that, but there were fecal smears all over the bottom sheet. It looked, I think, as if some attempts had been made to clean up. Mum's decorum is also breaking down. She has twice now eaten dinner in her tights and underwear. Odd as this may be, I see no point in insisting that she put more clothes on unless she needs to.

And yesterday I got an email from my second cousin Colin. He told me that his Aunt Ruth, who was mum's cousin and best friend during their school days in pre-war Liverpool, died last Sunday, aged 87, in a nursing home, having suffered with Alzheimer's.

I see no point in telling mum about this. She would not understand what I was saying. If she managed to divine that someone had died, she would be upset. The chances of her remembering Ruth the individual are almost nil.

There is something sobering and pathetic about two school-age girls, friends and cousins, each ending up struggling in a cloud of their own confusion on opposite sides of the earth, strangers to each other in every way.

My parent's generation is dying. We have had a death roughly once a year recently - two of dad's brothers, his cousin's wife, his cousin - and now one of mum's cousins. Between them, mum and dad had about eighty cousins, so we are to expect many more emails like Colin's.

And finally, the good news: Rachel succeeding in getting mum to have a shower today. That's hygiene for 2007 sorted out.