Friday July 8th 2005.
After Wednesday you would not believe what dad was like on Thursday, he was sat up in bed laughing and joking the best we've seen in a long while.
After the nurse had been in the afternoon we tried the hoist out...lol.. oh boy.. that was funny..lol.
we managed to get the harness on dad okay and attached to the winch like thing ( will take a picture of it later and post it here so it gives you an idea of what it's like) then we highered him off the bed and moved him over his wheelchair and lowered him down into it. It went quite well except for the above mentioned funny bits, all the time dad was joking about zooming around while sat in the harness, believe me there is no zooming that can be done in it..lol.. then as we lowered him into his chair we accidently knocked his bunion he didn't complain just said.. "that's it knocking my toes off now"...lol.
Once in the wheelchair we wrapped him up well with a blanket and took him for a walk down the road, he quite enjoyed the fresh air and change of scenery.
The next bit of fun began when we returned, he said he wanted to sit in the living room for a bit so we attached him to the hoist and tried to move it into posistion over a chair but the chair was too big for the hoist to fit round so we had to give that idea up and put him back in the wheelchair all was going well until as we were lowering him he said: "I need to go to the toilet" and he wasn't meaning for a pee as he has a catherter bag fitted so you can guess what he needed to do..lol.. We told him to hold on if he could as we hurrying as fast as we could but just as we were lowering him into the wheelchair he said: "Too late" and laughed..lol.. we all started to laugh we couldn't stop lowering him as there wouldn't be any point now so just carried on.
Please use your imagination now, imagine someone being up in the air hovering then lowered down into a chair after stating that it was too late.. ohhhh yuck!...lol.. we were all in stitches laughing.
Once he was back in the chair we then had to take him back to his room to be put back into bed before we could clean him so we were all thinking the worst as you do when it came to taking a "look"!
Here comes the surprise ( hope no one is reading this while they are having a meal..lol) It was only a small amount and quite hard so the mess was minimal, so not quite the mess we were expecting.
Anyway the rest of the afternoon/evening passed relatively quietly thank goodness.
During the Thursday night though things weren't as good he pressed the bell twice the first time was about 1.30am he had woke up totally confused and didn't know where he was he was also asking if my brother had arrived yet to come and pick him up. We calmed him down and explained it was the middle of the night and that my brother would be all tucked up in bed fast asleep and would visit tomorrow but he was a little destressed as he thought my brother wouldn't know where he was we explained that everyone knew where he was and knew he was safe, he seemed to accept that and settled down again.
The next time he pressed the bell was around 2.45am this time was because he'd messed himeself although while we were cleaning him up he was still confused as to where he was. By the time we had finished both Claire and myself didn't see any point in going back to bed so we knew Friday was going to be a longgggg day!
Friday evening
I wasn't wrong it has been a long day, dad has had a so so day today. In the morning he had a visit from 3 of his friends from where he used to live and who he also used to go bowling with so that broke the morning up for him with a few fresh faces to see and chat with and also gave us a small break.
I have to say I wasn't happy with the district nursing today, dad is supposed to have his injection between 2pm and 3pm, certain injections are like that where they have to be given at a certain time everyday.
The nurse still hadn't arrived by 3.50pm so I called them and left a message on the answer machine saying I hoped he hadn't been forgotten.
Dad has a report book where the nurse adds a report each day saying what has been done, what dad is like that day etc, at 5.15pm I was saying to the family that if the nurse didn't turn up today then in the morning I was going to record the fact in the report book, luckily as we were talking about it he arrived.
He couldn't apolgise enough and said that he'd had people dropping like flies, now I can understand emergencies happening but a phone call wouldn't have been too much just to say he would be late.
What he also added was that he didn't know dad was on his list of visits until he got back to the office and the head nurse asked him if he'd been because of the call I had made earlier, he said no, because dad wasn't down on his list, the head nurse explained that he was and he had to come out right away and give him his injection. Then he was complaining to us that everyone had now gone home except him!
This is the hoist with a picture of the harness underneath...
