Dad is home from respite

Dad came home from respite on Monday. He had enjoyed his stay. Whilst there he had gone on an outing to the beach for a barbecue and had attended a nearby day facility on a couple of days. On one of my visits a therapist said he was going to bring in Dad an old style radio to fix/tinker with and when I picked up dad I noticed in his room a magazine from the 70's all about electronics. Plus the art/music therapist wanted to see Dad's drawings he did when he was a young boy to give her an idea of what style of drawing he liked to do and hopefully she could engage him in doing some. The staff try very hard to get to know the person.

The first night home Dad didn't have a very good night. He got up quite a few times, tried having conversations with me from the hallway, wanted his brekky and in the wee hours was screaming out from his room and when I say screaming he was SHOUTING. The following day he kept asking me to take him to the hospital because he needed to go to the toilet. He wasn't in pain but he thought he was going to the toilet too much. He wasn't going too much and 'a urinary tract infection' did cross my mind but he wasn't in pain. It was like he was surprised and worried that he had used his bowels, saying see, look at this, I told you so, when he wiped his bottom. He didn't believe me when I said he would be alright and told me if it was one of my daughters I would take them straight away to the hospital and that he would never forgive me. He wipes his bottom and leaves the paper in a little pile on the floor. I have to tell him to pick it up and put it in the toilet. It was a long day.

The following night, last night, he slept through the night till about 6am. Thank goodness because my daughter had her final law exam for this semester today (she is in her exam as I write and I can't wait to speak to her to see how she thinks she has gone). Today Dad is going to the toilet without any problems and is in much better spirits and hopefully tomorrow will be a good day too.