I started looking after my mum two days a week from when she was 80 until she died at the age of 91.
At first, we would do two hours of housework in the morning followed by lunch then two hours in the afternoon. She was quite active, doing all her own gardening and shopping as well as playing Bridge every week. She rarely saw the doctor and took few medications.
As she declined, she stopped playing Bridge because of a lack of energy, not mental problems. The housework dropped to just two hours in the morning then was left entirely to me and a weekly cleaner. Her spinal arthritis flared up as well as her regular arthritis and she got gout. She started having high blood pressure intermittently that she tracked down to the preservatives in food.
She wrote her memoir, recorded an audiobook, enjoyed day trading and wrote poems on the Poetry Soup website.
Trips to the doctor became more frequent. I ended up doing all the gardening as well as the shopping and collected an ever increasing number of medications from the chemist.
She declined quite quickly towards the end. The high blood pressure had calcified her right ventricle so she had little energy, she started sundowning then developed pulmonary edema which is what had killed her own mother.
No comments:
Post a Comment