My Nan is in hospital.

Posted: December 16, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Matters that Matter | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

My Nan is in hospital, and is due to remain for a few more days, following a week of already having been stuck there.

She is 96, she has dementia, bronchitis, a UTI, and I’d imagine depression too considering all those combined after a week in hospital.

This year has been her greatest deterioration. This was the year she didn’t recognise me right away. And was the year she asked me if I’d seen her mother around. I hadn’t – she died before my mother was born.

She wants her mother, which is quite the thing to want at 96 years old.

I think, not just from the emotional low of wanting ‘mum’ to make everything better, but there’s also a simple, sensible logic to it.

“I’m confused and don’t know where I am – I’d better find where mother is. That’ll solve everything, as usual.” That’s a problem solving habit we grow out of, but I suppose we also cling to.

I’ve a feeling this is commonly noted by those visiting old and poorly relatives in hospital; they look so small.

She is curled up in her bed, blankets over and around her, with side-shelves full of debris from visitors and staff. Uneaten meals under heat-covers, unopened magazines of gossip and brain-teasers, sweets and fruit drinks.

I added to that some photos of my son, from his school’s photo shoot.

He looks ridiculous, but I suppose that’s in his DNA.

It made her smile and laugh, and I could see it also made her think and try to remember. She recognised him, but I think she may also have liked just seeing a cheerful little boy smiling under a mop of previously combed hair.

She was concerned about where her shoes were, so I kept pointing to them and throwing them in the air every now and then to liven up the place. She liked that too, but also asked that I put them back carefully, where she could see them.

“When I die, all my children are going to get a little bit of money.” she keeps saying, again and again, loudly. I kept having to match her volume by saying “not yet Nan, you just stay with us instead of going”, so others didn’t think I was trying to coax it out of her with a power of attorney one hand and a pen in the other.

I brought her some strawberry bon-bons, and she had one. I think it was the thrill of the day.

My mother is worried about there not being a proper care plan for her. Nan asked me, “who am I going to live with” and at first I didn’t know how to answer because I don’t know her care plan, and then I realised she’d actually forgotten that she currently lives alone, next door to my parents. She didn’t know where she lived, and was asking me.

It’s no less sad to tell you this because of who my Nan was, as that shouldn’t matter.

But I’ll tell about that sometime soon.

She should be home soon, before Christmas.

It’s seems pointless to tell you I love my Nan very much, that would be assumed by most and is true. But she loved me beyond care of danger and damage. She’d take on a bull at full charge for me.

Just a grandmother loving their grandchild I suppose.

But it’s important to remember, I feel anyway, that this is how things are, were, and will be. It’s important to remember because it’s important.

Nan was completely on my side. And now I sit at hers.

I’ll tell you about her sometime. Her name is Betty, something she was first called when she was a little girl, held by her mother and father.

Now she’s 96. But she’s still Betty.

Sam