Furniture antics

17^th July 2013. A great deal has happened and my nerves have been stretched as a result. In desperate need of a break I phoned my sister Nathalie and asked her to come down from Kent for the weekend if it was possible  for the 19th July as I needed a break, her initial response was sorry its end of term lots to do with her two girls at school, but then she phoned me back and said ok.  This was a nerve wracking thing for me as I had to make sure everything was prepared in the house and the shopping was done, anticipate what may go wrong and prepare notes for it. I told my daughter Kimberley we were off to my friends at the Isle of Wight for the weekend.

18th July.  Mum was still refusing to drink and was sweltering in the heat refusing to allow me to pull her curtains closed to shut out the sunlight that was flooding straight onto her bed where she lay.  My brother came round and tried to coax Mum into allowing us to move her bed around so that it was running along a shaded wall, surprisingly she agreed.

I told my brother this was a VERY BAD IDEA as Nathalie would be coming down tomorrow (Friday) and would be faced with Mum being difficult because her bedroom had been changed. Reasoning seemed futile as we both knew she would be better off away from the window but I could see it causing major problems.

We moved Mum into a spare room while we moved the furniture around to accommodate the bed being moved, now this is no ordinary bed, it is a wooden cabin bed with a bed that slides in underneath it.  Mum insisted she have this bed so that she was at window level and could see out of the window, it is very heavy to move and not in the slightest bit suitable for her! We finally completed the task and all seemed well, my brother left happy that the task had been completed.  

Less than an hour later Mum called me and said she thinks she would prefer her bed to be moved to under the window so she could see out (totally forgetting that we had just moved it from there).  I said it was very good where it was as it stopped the full sun being on the bed all day!  Mum started getting agitated and couldn’t reason that we had only just finished moving it an hour or so ago.  She started shouting at me to move the bed and if I didn’t she would.  Unfortunately, my brother was now at the vet having his aging dog put to sleep so was not contactable and I was due at the doctors for an appointment.

I explained to Mum that I had to go to the doctors and that my brother was at the vet and couldn’t come round, but we would move it back later.  It didn’t placate her, she ranted and raved so I left her to go to the bathroom to prepare for my appointment. When I was ready to leave I found Mum trying to heave the bed round (now Mum, as I may have mentioned before is about 4ft tall and rather frail) She told me that if I didn’t help her she would do it herself and if she needed help she would shout out the window for someone from the street to help her.  On that note I told her to wait until I got back and to stop being silly.

I returned half an hour later to find out from Dad that Mum had managed to drag the bed across the room and it got wedged and in frustration she called on him to assist with getting it in place under the window. Dad suffers with a bad back and Parkinson’s and for the years that Mum has been diagnosed with dementia has been totally shunned by Mum becoming the focal point of her anger so as you can imagine it was a surprise that she asked him to help. I helped re organise the bedroom and remake the bed, Mum climbed in pleased with her efforts and fell asleep.

Sometimes I despair.