Yesterday 2nd Oct 2015

My sister is coming today – whoopee!! I will get a break.

I wake up at 6.45am, I get the children up at 7am, the children leave for school at 8am.

The carer arrives at 8.30am and we get my mum ready for the day. I telephoned the doctors to ask if I should be giving my mum aspirin or if there is anything I can do to prevent my mum from having these mini strokes or TIA’s. The doctor said that someone should come out and check my mum and make sure her pulse rate etc…. is okay.

I cancel my mums day at the day care centre and we wait for the doctor. The doctor arrives at around 12pm. He checks my mum and says that everything appears to be fine. The doctor said that it is possible it was a major TIA or a mini stroke that my mum had yesterday. I explain to the doctor that an MRI scan had been done previously, to assess if my mum was having mini strokes and that it came back inconclusive, as the area of the brain that they check for mini strokes was so badly damaged, due to my mum’s Alzheimer’s, that they could not definitely say whether she had a mini stroke or not.

The doctor said that If my had a reoccurrence of yesterdays event, I could either, call out an ambulance, or I could wait and see if it clears and normalizes by itself. He explained that there is a 2 hour window in which my mum would be able to receive blood clot drugs, therefore, I would have to decide what I wanted to do right away. If I called out an ambulance they would need to take my mum to our nearest hospital, which is around one hour away, and they would need to carry out a CT scan to ensure that my mum had a blood clot in her brain rather than a bleed in her brain, before they gave her blood clot drugs.

My mum and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden relaxing, we had lunch and just chilled out all day. I felt drained.

My mum’s keyworker returned a call which I had made to her earlier today, I told my mum’s keyworker about my visit with my local MP. I explained about the situation with my mum over the last couple of days. I said to her that I hoped that all the strain of heaving my mum in and out of my car has not contributed to my mum having the mini stroke (TIA).

My mum has been really healthy over the last few months and it feels like a bit of a coincidence that she falls ill directly after the change in transport routines. I talk to my mum’s keyworker about needing to leave my son in whilst I take my daughter out to her activities etc… and explain that it would be great, if, as a family, we could go out and do things together. My mum’s keyworker said that she could possibly work something into my mums care plan which would allow me to take my children out, I thought that this was a great idea. Obviously this would be based on the availability of funding.

I telephoned my sister and asked her about, whether I should call an ambulance, or not, if our mum had another turn. We both agreed that I should call an ambulance. We spoke about the extent of my mum’s disability now, through having Alzheimer’s disease and we spoke about the long-term effect that a full-blown stroke could have on my mum – it is hard enough for my mum now, never mind, having further disabilities to deal with.

My children arrive home, we all had our dinner – I still felt drained.

The carer arrived and we washed my mum and we put her pj’s on and then I sit my mum on her chair in the livingroom.

My sister arrives, we sit and chat for a while. I go to bed. I am still feeling drained.