Alligators and old people

When you are up to your arse in alligators it is difficult to remember that the original objective was to drain the swamp

It was written on my door at university - I thought it was very funny, particularly because it had the word arse in it...

Now considerably older I find that I have been in that situation far too many times for it to be really hilarious, But just now I tried to explain my current deep feeling of failure with this phrase, and it was a bit of a failure.

I really think that something has got lost in the process of trying to find some way of making my mother's life easy. She is 87 and has, as you will know if you have read this blog, had a particularly difficult time in 2007. She first had major problems with her circulation that resulted in her giving up smoking after 70 years of between 20-40 cigarettes a day and then she had a fall in September. She has recovered and relapsed from that fall more times than I care to count. She had my brother Richard and his wife Carolyn living with her (with occasional respite stints by me) up until just before Christmas when I decided that it was time to get her out into a 5-star 'seniors home'.

The place is wonderful - but I knew in my heart of hearts that she wouldn't thrive - I just hoped she would, for some crazy reason, against all expectation grasp the opportunity and enjoy it.

My mother had been having considerable trouble with walking since her fall - confidence? or some really problem with her legs and back? I don't know - she had recovered and then relapsed at least twice between September and Christmas. Just before she moved to the new 'home' she started falling over again - it could be because she had lost a lot of muscle tone in her legs as a result of being so sedentary since the fall - or perhaps the devil in the back of my head has it right and it is because she didn't want to go into the home... I know she had confused (and still has) the home I selected for her with another one where mobility was "de rigour" and often says she can't use her zimmer frame because they are banned by the home (they aren't).

Anyway on the day (Christmas Eve) she arrived she took to a wheel chair and hasn't taken a step from it since - now she needs a mechanical hoist to get her out of bed, onto the toilet and into and out of the wheel chair. Her legs are now the same size and my arms - two weeks ago they were a little skinny, but OK and she was walking, albeit slowly with sticks...

Since she moved in to the home she has been 'being brave'; all the staff love her, and horrors of horrors she is being 'nice' - that can't last, something is going to blow soon...

She has stopped eating and is loosing weight so fast that she has complained that someone has swapped her skirts for larger ones. Today, while she was in the hoist her skirt litterly fell off her - it would have been funny if it wasn't tragic - particularly as one of her many excuses for not eating is that she thinks she is getting fat!

I put her in this fantastic place to improve her life - and have been trying to make her life fantastic ever since. She now needs two full time nurses to get her up out of bed to go to the toilet, or wash. She can't walk and she seems to be in continuous pain or in a panic.

And why are we doing this? To make her happy?? To make me happy??? Who is kidding whom????

What was the original objective? Oh yes, to drain the swamp... but did anyone ask the alligator?