Last night as soon as Meg had been put to bed, I did my customary washing up and then went to bed myself at 8.30 as I was feeling pretty rough with this heavy cold/flu from which I am suffering. I slept fitfully for a few hours and then got up to see the New Year in in which I toasted myself and the rest of the world with a few sips of Fino sherry (all I had to hand) before I took to my bed again. I slept fairly fitfully and awoke at about 5.15 at which time I did not want to drift off to sleep again as I needed to get up at 6.00am as the carers were scheduled for 7.00am. When the carers arrived, Meg was pretty unresponsive and I think the carers were very concerned about her. We decided to get Meg up and sitting in her special chair in the Music Lounge where she is warm and comfortable and I find it easier to care for her than if she were actually to stay in bed. I had a quick consultation with my son about the appropriate courses if action - the evident thing, if course is to call a doctor to have Meg checked over but New Year's Day is a Bank Holiday and our quite large practice does not have an out-of-hours service. The system is to fill in a form on the practice web site but of course, this was not made available and the only advice was to call 111 or to call 999 to get an ambulance. As Meg is so excessively sleepy, it may be that the dementia is advancing inexorably or it may be that the very bad cold/flu I have has also infected Meg but she is not in a position to report any of her symptoms. However, having got Meg into her chair I did manage to get a beakerful of porridge inside her and she showed some signs of coming round very slightly. I did consult the Alzheimer's Society website to check for end-of-life symptoms because I knew already that excessive sleeping may just be due to the body progressively shutting down. But the website itself indicated that end-of-life symptoms are very difficult to discern and we could be talking about days or even months but looking at the list of items that the society details, I would not be surprised if Meg were to be in this state - not to be overly dramatic about it. I have written an email to the Admiral Nurses (who specialise in Meg's condition) but they like GP's practices are not open/available on Bank Holidays.
After I had got some breakfast inside Meg I FaceTimed my sister in Yorkshire who has a couple of spells in hospital (an initial visit followed by a discharge and an almost equally rapid readmission which I fear is all too common these days) I received the bad news that the husband of one of my nieces has had a couple of strokes - one of which seemed comparatively mild and from which it appeared that he was recovering and a second where I still have to receive some up-to-date news as he still in a specialised stroke unit in Leeds. I have tried to get into contact with my niece and no doubt we will talk in the hours ahead but it seems that other parts of our extended family are having their travails. I got a reasonable amount of lunch into Meg (quiche accompanied by some Cavolo Nero kale) but after that Meg seemed to relapse into her by now customary sleep. When I had telephoned my son this morning, he indicated that he and his wife would journey back from Watford to be with Meg this afternoon and they came around at 2.30 and stayed for the major part of the afternoon. Naturally, I am always pleased to see my son and daughter-in-law and we had some pleasant chats about family matters, retirement plans, past colleagues and a lot else besides. Meg was largely asleep during most of their stay and we had a quick family consultation about Meg's illness and what the short term and medium term prognosis is likely to be.
There is an amazing story about how our commercial world operates breaking today. A consortium of banks and building societies are to be approached by the Post Office which is going to try to raise the £100 million in a fees hike. These fees are payable when banks and building societies use Post Office services (for example low cost banking) and this money will then give existing sun postmasters a better pay deal. No doubt, this is a spin-off from the recent Post Office scandal but I cannot see the big banks playing ball with this proposal. I am a great aficionado of the Royal Institution Christmas lectures but I missed last nights which was the last in the series of three. But my son and daughter-in-law informed me that the last one in the series was the best of all three but I missed it last night as I went to bed early. So after I get Meg to bed this evening, this will be something I will catch up on and apparently the themes are largely those in the book 'Ultra-Processed People'. On the subject of food, one of my New Year resolutions is to confine myself to only two pieces of chocolate per day. But there is some evidence that the high quality, dark chocolate can actually be quite good for you so like many things in life I suspect that a bit of what you fancy does you good whereas a lot of what you fancy is undoubtedly harmful to you. I have a bit of a dilemma in that I have quite a lot of Christmas food left over (mince pies, stollen, Christmas puddings and so on) but it is all of the high carbohydrate variety too much of which cannot do you good in the long term.
© Mike Hart [2024]