As you may be aware, dad has been in respite care since moving here. Australia has provision for 62 days of respite in a fiscal year... of which he is now halfway into. Like any of the previous - waiting periods, I guess you would call them, for lack of better description - it is smooth sailing for a while, then the deadline looms, and then it is 'make a decision time'. (Ooops... run on sentence, better watch that!) That is when the panic and anxiety come back to roost.
For the past couple of weeks, I have hardly been able to go to sleep for worrying about what to do with dad... where is he going to live? What are we going to do? We popped him into respite at the place closest to my brother without much research, only to find out that it is quite pricey. (Actually, we kind of knew that, given the location it was in!) Never mind, we needed appropriate accommodation for him as soon as we landed. This one fit the bill, so we took it.
I have been so happy with dad in respite at the care home here. He has been settling in, getting on with the nurses, making a few new friends. He even seemed to have curbed the 'crawling out of bed' activities! Physiotherapists work with him every morning, he does crafts in the activity room, there is morning and afternoon tea with fresh baking. He does sometimes rest in the afternoon... but he is rarely left alone and forgotten. With the Parkinson's and dementia, he needs a certain level of attention and care, which he is receiving.
Last Friday at the Christmas lunch, I spoke with a woman who's brother-in-law with dementia had just moved into the care home following stints in two other care homes. Two things she spoke about stayed with me. One was that he was not receiving proper care with his dementia in the other homes. The other was that they moved him to be closer to them as they were having to travel great distances to check up on him, which was becoming more frequent.
I wake up around 4am each morning, lying and worrying for a couple of hours about what to with dad. Following this conversation with this woman, I woke up in a panic one morning realizing, "Dad needs to be close to me!" I had been thinking of moving him to a spot about 40 minutes away.
I realized that throughout this whole ordeal, I have had to work on some creative solutions. None of this has been text book. I mean, who loses their wife at 68, and has to deal with a degenerative disease on top of it. Typically people grow old and frail and end up transferring into a care home in their 80s.
Once again, I have had to come up with a creative solution to the problem. Dad needs to be close to me, so that I don't have to traipse across town the 2-3x a week that he needs me. (What does he still need me for, you ask? That is a blog post unto itself... which is currently half written!) I need to get a job and get a life, so that I can figure out where I am going to be and settle down. Which means I am going to be in Rose Bay and vicinity for a while. My two main concerns were that I need to be close to him, and I need to properly research other care homes... which is difficult as they are across town and it is going to take some time, of which we are swiftly running out of.
So the solution is for him to remain in care where he is currently in respite. (He can remain in the same room.) With the Parkinson's, dementia and osteoporosis... his care needs are great. I can trust that this care home will care for his needs, as they have done some well already. We may need to shift him in the future, but that is something we can worry about later. It's not ideal... but then nothing much about this experience has been ideal!
I feel the weight has been lifted from my shoulders slightly. I won't have to run around looking for another care home for him right now. Instead, I can focus on other matters at hand... purchasing new equipment, getting the financials sorted out. Oh... and focus on carving out some kind of fun and normalcy for the Christmas season!
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