It's been a while

It's been a while since my last blog post, but a lot has happened - where do I begin?

As I have spoken about before mum had 'this thing' (I don't really know what to call it) about her clothes - she had none. Yes she did not have a walk in wardrobe but she certainly did not not have any clothes.

So 23rd July mum and dad were getting picked up at 6am to go on holiday, great this is what they needed some time away in the sun. Unfortunately the night before the issue arose with the clothes again - mum had no clothes!!!! The suitcase was laid out and was being packed, but for some reason mum was getting very upset and angry as these were not her clothes, long story short the anger and upset returned.

Mum would not calm down and it got to about 3am so a decision was made to phone NHS24 for some assistance. A doctor was sent out and barely spent time trying to help solve the issue, basically told mum if you don't calm down and take some medication you wil need to be sectioned!

How is that helping the situation any? She is already upset and angry and now a stranger is in her home telling her she needs to be sectioned - when we know why she is acting this way - she has Alzheimer's. Again long story short mum ended up being handcuffed out the house by police officers as 'she was not co-operating'. You could not make this up. Where is the compassion?

At the hospital it was decided the best place was a psychiatric unit as the only other place was a dementia unit for elderly people - where my mum had worked and where her own gran - who had Alzheimer's - sadly passed away. Outwith those two options there really is no other option for someone with Early Onset to go, and neither was a great option - Outwith the emotional attachment to the dementia unit.

Once in the psychiatric unit not one member of staff came and spoke to us, apart from telling us to have a seat in the day room. Now understandably mum is upset, she has been through a lot and doesn't understand why she is where she is. So we manage to get everything to a calm and one member of staff comes up to my mum to ask if a doctor has seen her - surely this is not something a patient should have to answer, where is the hand over? Mum starts to get a bit upset again as she is wondering why a doctor has to see her, so this nurse goes away. The second nurse comes over and asks my mum if she has been ADMITTED, this again gets my mum upset as she is getting confused to what is going on and starts to panic.

The nurse then tells me there is a family room if we wish to go there - why weren't we offered the is in the first place? - I ask where it is so I can help my mum along, mum is getting more agitated so at this point the staff kick into training mode! Two nurses pretty much grab my mum under the arms and direct her to the family room whilst shouting on another member of staff to assist. They open the family room door and try to shut it so it's just her in there, I make my way into the room with my brother and dad.

We the hear the nurse shout - get some medication before this kicks off. There are now four members of staff standing outside this room incase this 'dangerous' woman kicks off, we then see the nurse handed a bit of paper to which i hear her say ' aw the poor soul she has Alzheimer's' So clearly not one person in that unit had made an attempt to see whet we and how we had ended up in that unit that day.

I can still feel myself shaking whilst writing this. I just cannot believe how it escalated from asking from a little bit of help at 3am to then being basically heckled into a room by three members of staff. Not one person it seemed had taken the time to try and understand my mum's situation and how she must be feeling and understand what's going on with her.

The treatment in the first psychiatric ward was absolutely ridiculous, they should have offered us a family room initially whilst they found out what was going on. Even though we are in there due to an illness, my mum is still a human being and deserves to be treated with respect.

There seems to be a huge flaw here. We have not been given any help on how to help calm down mum if she gets upset and angry, and there doesn't seem to be a system in place for helping people out either.

I could rant on but I'll finish here for the time being by stating that mum was detained for 28days, and moved to a new ward upstairs where she would spend those 28days.

#alzheimers