48 HOURS

I haven't had a lot of sleep in the last 48 hours. Another crisis and probably not the last. I can do almost any kind of nursing, blood, guts, stitches but not lunacy. Anyone who looks after patients with Alzheimer's or dementia has my admiration. We have so many things to look for with Mum these days, that a headache was looked at as just a side affect of the cancer drugs. The urinary tract infection took us by surprise and once again we missed the signs creeping up on her.

I've been through UTI's with my mother-in-law and I never thought I would have to deal with that again. My poor M-in-L talked to people who weren't there and she talked non-stop for days, whole conversations which were lucid in their detail but with phantom beings. When she was moved, she was terrified because she couldn't tell which was floor or ceiling and thought she was falling. On the worst day before the anti-biotics began to work, I sat with her for 12 hours listening to this terrible raving but every now and then, she would touch me and ask if I was real. Then she would sleep a little before it started again.

It's a terrrible thing to go through, knowing that what you are doing is quite wrong but unable to do anything to stop it. Usually the infection is well entrenched before the mental symptoms begin and I would say now that Mum's probably started on Saturday or possibly Friday. By Monday night, she frightened the Brick Outhouse by trying to put a cup through the microwave door because she thought it was already open. She couldn't remember how to get back into bed even with him helping.

Thank goodness for a family doctor who still makes house calls because she was too terrified to leave the house. She was dazed and incoherant. We had to take away all her pills and constantly tell her where she was. At one stage I found her with the phone in her walker and the receiver on the bedside table and trying to answer the radio. The hard part was hearing her being lucid but having the next sentence completely loopy. We had to double dose the anti-biotics yesterday which meant staying until the early hours and bless the Outhouse, he set the alarm so he could take me home.

She was a long way better today but it was a constant battle to juggle the tablets so they didn't clash. Trying to keep track was driving me crazy so I can see how she lost control of them. The headache is gone, the confusion was down to one loopy every two hours or so and she knew enough to swear at Aunt Patty who suggested that a district nurse could do better than 'her girls'. She also got pissed off at Aunt Selma who says she has no pain in her knee and feels wonderful. She was lucid enough to read the letter from the Government telling her she was getting a one off $100 payment to help with expenses. "Bugger expenses," she said, "I'll have that DVD set from the ABC shop." She then asked me who the visitor was as she looked at the bedroom chair with her shawl draped on it.

So it's back to every day visits for another week or so. We'll test the urine every 3 days to keep an eye on it. The wound cut has almost closed except for a tiny bit where there is a dissolving stitch that hasn't dissolved. We just keep adding to the list of things to watch as there will be other signs of the body breaking down. We can't keep ahead of them because we can't tell what will be the next to go. It's a waiting game and we just have to play it.