2024 Quick Daily Posts

[richardandtracy]

Little amount of news about MIL: She's fit to go home, provided a 'Care Package' can be put into place. Usually takes 24-48hrs, so maybe today. I do hope she's ready to go home.

Regards,

Richard

[Serinde]

Fingers crossed, Richard. Easier for everyone if MIL can be at home where she's (probably) most comfortable.

[richardandtracy]

She definitely wants to be at home.

It's strange. In Devon, my Dad was subject to a dementia test every time he was taken into hospital (and even when transferred between hospital and a geriatric recovery ward physically 20 miles away). He was pleased to say he passed every time. In Kent, the hospital avoids saying anything about dementia tests, and when asked, always say that they're best carried out in a familiar environment so the patient isn't stressed. My feeling is that this is a cop-out, in an unfamiliar environment, dementia is MOST likely to manifest itself strongly if someone has even the initial stages, so is the BEST time environment to check for it. Unless, of course, the whole testing regime is set up to AVOID finding it, as if it's found, the hospital might have to do something.

Or is that a bit cynical?

Regards,

Richard

[Serinde]

Not cynical. I see it as a sign that the system is under increasing strain. Will you MIL's GP conduct such a test? Also, you have to think what it is your MIL and yourselves want to do with this information. Will it give access to care that MIL needs? Presumably it will help you and Tracy, which is what it should be doing.

[richardandtracy]

Will MIL's GP do anything... ?
Your guess is as good as mine, but last time she was in hospital, they struck her of their lists as she was 'no-longer in their catchment'. They struck her off on day 3 of a hospital stay. We found this out when she'd returned and was finishing her hospital given drugs and needed a repeat prescription. We were told verbally at that point, nothing in writing, that she'd been struck off on 2 January this year after she went into hospital on 31 December last year. They couldn't wait to get rid of her.

Oh, her practice made the front page of the Daily Mail, and the article is still online:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... worse.html
Sorry about the intrusive adverts..

Regards,

Richard

[Serinde]

Nightmare. Makes me hope our doctors' surgery has a plan for the 100 new houses being built. I know the primary school will struggle -- will we be back to immobile mobile classrooms? (Actually, they were larger than those in the remodelled school!)

[Mabel Figworthy]

[richardandtracy]

MIL back from hospital, with a care package (thank goodness). She came back yesterday at about 2pm. Seems much fitter and has put a small amount of weight on. Furthermore, she's not quite so confused. She still thinks her dad died last week, refers to me as 'Dad' on occasion, Tracy as 'Mum' and every now & again says Tracy is her sister. However... hard as it is to believe, she is improved compared to the state she was in when she went into hospital.

It's weird how she says she was moved out of the Medway Hospital onto a ward in Faversham. Faversham has no hospital, and she was in the MHU assessment ward in Medway hospital all the time she there. Apparently Medway was awful, but the staff in Faversham were very, very good. We're almost as confused as she is by what she thinks happened and how it may correlate to reality. While she is confused, she seems less confused than she was.
While MIL was in hospital, Tracy had a chat with a dietician who'd just spent nearly an hour with MIL, and then they asked Tracy if MIL was usually this confused. Apparently everything MIL said was superficially sensible, but on thinking about it, it was bonkers. How could her mum have been looking after her? How did her dad (who'd be about 120 for this to be true) only die last week?

Regards,

Richard

[Serinde]

It's good that the care and feeding up your MIL had in hospital has made a difference in a small way to her overall health. It's also really, really good that professionals have noticed MIL's real confusion about life and time. Those are small steps in the right direction (whichever direction that is, of course).
I have noticed with my BIL that he can appear superficially quite cogent... until you think about what he's actually saying (he's 81, and he and a primary school pal are going to go and have tea with one of their childhood teachers... that sort of thing). He can appear to hold a perfectly lucid passing-the-time sort of conversation, but he won't remember it 5 minutes later if you refer to something he said earlier. Now, he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and it is such a cruel, cruel disease. Has your MIL been diagnosed with dementia, or is she still in the "confused" category? Either way, it's awful for you and Tracy.

[richardandtracy]

MIL hasn't been diagnosed with dementia. At least not that we can find. She did have some brain scans at the beginning of the year that we became aware of as she was sent a copy of a letter from the hospital to her GP that indicated that a diagnosis was at least being considered [and I quote] 'especially given the loss of brain matter since the last scan.' (an earlier scan we had no idea had happened). Somehow those two scans are neither available at the hospital nor at the GP's, and the GP (the one that struck her off after 3 days) has no record of anything dating earlier than January when she went back on their list - they actually started her drugs and notes anew from a copy of the discharge prescription as if she was a totally new patient to the NHS.

Just
Makes
You
Want
To
Scream.

MIL's GP has improved since the Daily Mail article I linked to. They are no longer quite the worst in the country.

Regards,

Richard

[Mabel Figworthy]

It's also really, really good that professionals have noticed MIL's real confusion about life and time.

That is definitely a start, but a little joined-up thinking between GPs and hospitals would be a lovely thing...
It is all very worrying and wearying for you and Tracy; with that and work, is there any way of managing the occasional time of R&R?

[Serinde]

We are currently receiving a lot (and I mean a lot) of notifications at the moment. This is basically spam attempts at memberships, and these threaten to clog up the works. I'll try to keep them deleted by checking in 4-5 times a day, but you all in other time zones might find things slowed up a bit until I get up in the morning! Once we had 149! I expect the problem to persist until after Christmas.

I'm also keeping an eye on the less savoury spams...

[Steam.Jo]

A way to manage these high volume spam attacks can be to ban ranges of IP addresses that they are coming from: e.g. If you are getting Spammed by Russia or China it is possible in some forum software packages to block all IP addresses from those countries.

Jo

[Serinde]

Indeed. I have, I believe, suggested this to Alex. But software costs money, and to say that this website runs on a shoestring is to give it airs, I suspect. But I'll raise it again with him.

[Mabel Figworthy]

Airs on a Shoestring, that well-known piece of music.

Can you find out how much the software would cost? If not too extravagant I'd be happy to donate a year's worth of it.

[richardandtracy]

Give a yell if anything would help.

Regards,

Richard

[Serinde]

Thanks, guys. Must say that it would be really nice to get rid of the spam names so that we could welcome bona fide new members once in a while! At the moment, they are lost amid the rubbish.

[Mabel Figworthy]

It's odd, I can't see the post about AI anymore
I mean, I can see it in the list of topics, but whwn I click on it, either on "latest unread reply" or just the title of it, I get a blank page!

[Steam.Jo]

Something has gone wrong with the text in the final reply and the database is interpreting it as a command and confusing itself. Its a known problem with forum software.

Richard maybe able to use the back button on his computer and to delete his last post/ over write it or an administrator might be able to delete the last post without loading it. The Database reference for the post that is causing the problem is 725023.

Edit: It is possible to view Richard's post in the AI thread if you go to his "latest posts" under his user name. Either Richard or an admin should have the ability to delete that post from there and that will enable the thread to be viewed again

Jo

[richardandtracy]

I am sorry. Didn't think I'd done anything silly in there. Just had a list of 2 items & then a reference to other AI systems, one of which I think could be, physically, very dangerous because people who don't know better could convince themselves something is strong enough when it isn't.

I'm afraid I couldn't even see the post after submitting it. May have submitted it twice after pressing the back button and then having another go.

I thought maybe the forum had had a glitch & saved the post as an rtf file to post later, to allow diagnosis of the problem, here's an image of that RTF file:


Hope it helps, and I do apologize.

Regards,

Richard