2025 week 27

My contract ended yesterday and on the same day, my request for redeployment  resulted in being offered a role as an administration assistant in an aged care centre. It will be just 16 hours a week but full time in the first week while I'm being trained. I start next week so I have four days off to try getting my head around life.

With mum in hospital I wasn't going to be having a holiday but I'm a bit disappointed there's no time to catch my breath. I'm grateful to have a job but I just hoped for a break.

I toured the aged care place mum wants to go to today. It was ok but not amazing. They have a room available but mum's discharge from hospital is too distant and uncertain for us to accept the offer.

Everything feels sad and it's been raining all day. A friend of mine forgot we had a coffee date. My gut told me she would.

2025 Week 26

 

Recovery Centre Dog Sherry. We have the same hair

About six weeks ago the mid-north coast of NSW had what was called an extreme weather event, a very large amount of rain leading to one in 500 year flooding.

I had many requests to go and help but of course, there were other things taking my time and attention.

Nine days after dad's funeral, I headed off to Taree on a volunteer deployment. The following day I had a phone call to say Mum had been unable to get off the toilet all night (9pm-11am)

I regularly call to check on her but her phone answering can be hit and miss so it might have taken several more hours before I realised there was a real problem. As it happened, a nurse going to shower her found her and insisted she was transported to hospital, where she is still.

Mum is 82 with heart failure, disability, frailty of age, a cancer history and some cognitive impairment so it becomes complicated.

In hospital her meds were changed and that caused her to retain fluid, her heart was really struggling and a UTI caused delirium.

I was away up the coast thinking she was just getting checked over and held in hospital while an aged care bed was organised. Despite several calls to the hospital and many messages to my siblings, I didn't know how bad it was and got rather a shock to get home to a frail and confused mum on oxygen.

The one good part of all this is that she will not be allowed to return home and the system will ensure that she has no choice but to go into care, something the family and her care team have all wanted for some time.

Fourteen hours of attempting to get off the toilet hurt mums elbows so that she is unable to feed herself. Tonight I was at the hospital to make sure she had help with her dinner and in a room of four patients, there were three middle aged daughters there to make sure their confused parents were fed.

Wingham Memorial Town Hall. One of the highlights of this kind of volunteering is seeing a range of public buildings. This one is beautiful.

Go to Whoa

Deniliquin water tower

 Late last year I took on a contract role, my first full time employment for 26 years. Early this year, Mum was admitted to hospital and I became Dad's driver, morphing into shopper, driver, general back stop and advocate. I went from three easy days a week at work to five hard days plus supporting Dad.
I find the timing so very odd: Dad has died and my contract finishes in 19 days time. 
Why, I wonder, did all that intensity happen in the same six month period?  Why did it all intersect so precisely?

What will be next? Will I go from go, go, go to STOP.

I do hope to have a bit of a break but I don't want to be unemployed for long if at all.

A holiday would be nice: I thought of a Murray River cruise (too expensive) a reading holiday with a water view (a good idea) or maybe a reading holiday with a bush or mountain view (also a good idea).

I also have had in mind for some time in the future a tour of silo art (I don't think I want to do that right now) 

And then I thought of another option: a trip to see Lake Eyre, it only fills properly a few times a century so this could be my last chance.

Let me get through the funeral and finish the contract and then if I can set the ducks in a row, I think I'd like to see Lake Eyre.