His calls just made no sense:
'Mike. I've forgotten why I called. Hang on while I look for it...'
'Your mum hasn't eaten anything all day, you must come over and make tea for us.'
'We need to go shopping. There is absolutely no food in the house.'
I can't find my glasses. Can you come over and look for them?'
'Your mum has broken my glasses.'
''What time are you coming?'
I took every call and began by trying to make sense of them. I soon realised that there was no sense to be made. How could he say his glasses were broken if he couldn't find them? How could there be no food, when Rachel was there yesterday? I was busy, so I was adamant that I would not be called over on mere pretext. Then I received this email from our case manager, Lana:
Hello Mike
Gail from the day centre rang me this afternoon and wanted me to let you know that Mr Pritchard had returned to their centre after having gone home at the end of the centre day. He said he was hungry and there was no food in the house. I have contacted MOW and they inform me that the volunteers have been able to deliver all the meals this week including today's meals. The staff at the centre gave Mr Pritchard some food and he went back home.
Please let me know if there is anything further we can be doing.
What? Dad made no mention of this! Next, Regan called to say that dad called her about the lack of food. By this time, I was no longer able to concentrate on work. I was convinced that there was nothing I could do by going over, but it now looked as if I ought to, just to ascertain what was going on. I had the deep impression that we had just broached a new level in dementia, and I wanted to make sure.
By the time I arrived, Greg had already delivered take-away dinner and left to go to his own house.
Dad was wearing a perfectly good pair of glasses, but not his new ones, which do indeed seem to be lost.
In the fridge and cupboards I found bread, fruit, biscuits, muesli bars, crisps, orange juice, tinned soups and baked beans, cheese, crackers, margarine, vegemite, etc. etc. Enough to last them a week. I was unable to see what could possibly have triggered the fear of imminent starvation.
Dad offered to make a cup of tea, but never managed to do it. I stood back and watched him fail. Making tea is one of our benchmarks. He is as bad now as mum was only six or nine months ago. He's going down fast.
Mum had a cut on her finger. She pulled the band-aid off and it started to bleed again. I tried to persuade her to throw the bloody thing away, but she flattened it out on the worktop and wanted to keep it. I helped her wash the finger, and applied a new bandage - just as a way of providing a cushion to protect it. Almost as soon as I finished she was complaining that the bandage was too big, or not attached properly, or something. Despite my protests, then instructions, she pulled the bandage to pieces and started smoothing it out on the worktop. It was bloody on the inside. I balled it up in my hand and threw it in the bin. Mum flew into a rage. She fished the bandage out of the bin, and brushed some cat food from it. She then began dabbing at the cut with it. I stepped in and forcibly removed the bandage from her hand, despite her increasingly furious objections. She picked up the bin and hit me over the head with it. Dad cried:
'Hey! Hey!'
I was not surprised. I had a feeling this was coming. Mum was insanely angry - she would have been swearing blind if she wasn't so chronically incoherent. She started shouting 'Get out! Get out!' at me.
I was angry too now. 'No mum, I am not going to leave while you are touching a cut on your finger with things out of the trash.' But it became clear that, short of physically restraining her, I had no way of preventing mum doing what she wanted to do. She had completely lost all social conscience. She could only see me as an obstacle-irritant with no internal motives other than to be a problem for her.
I went out and spoke to Greg by phone from the garden. We discussed ramping the evening meal service up to as many days per week as we can. I mentioned that mum's appointment with the psychogeriatrician cannot come a moment too soon, now. If we cannot solve the twin problems of aggression and not eating we cannot continue to leave mum and dad to their own devices. They require almost constant supervision now.
