Thursday 10th January
Two phonecalls this morning.
1
The first was from a lady called Bulbul Sandyford who is Mam's Occupational Therapist.They would like to do a home assessment on Friday 18th January at around 10.00am.
This would involve Mam being brought to the house for a period of about 30-45 minutes in which she would be observed negotiating the home environment and doing some of her day to day tasks. After this she will be taken back to the hospital. Her physiotherapist will be there, too.

I'm assuming that you, Peter, can be in the house for this. Is that OK?

2
The second call was from Jill Summersall who is Mam's Speech Therapist. She would like Peter and myself to meet her at 4.00pm on Tuesday 15th January in which she can discuss Mam's progressive dysphasia problem and about strategies we can use to communicate with Mam more effectively. She wanted to know my own thoughts about the nature of Mam's problem and when we first noticed things were going wrong with her language processing.

One thing that's making Mam's communication more difficult is that she is almost completely deaf and doesn't wear her hearing aid. They are trying to be as firm with her as they can be in order to get Mam to wear the hearing aid. On some counts, Mam scores quite well and Jill doesn't think that Mam's actually that confused. There is, however, a problem with her assimilation of information. In one exercise, Jill read Mam a short story and then asked Mam how much she'd taken in; Mam replied that she'd forgotten it all.

She (Jill) doesn't, however, think that Mam is "demented". But as the problem is classed as "progressive" then I would guess that it is going to get worse.

She also mentioned that the OT people had noticed that Mam wasn't cleaning herself properly after using the toilet.

She also mentioned that a brain scan was being planned for Mam.

That's all for now. I am suffering from this nasty bug that's doing the rounds and am off work. I can't go into the unit until tomorrow at the earliest lest I infect the patients.