back from our vacation
A page in the diary ""
Written by suew 18. Jun 2008 05:30 PM
Hi all, did you miss me? We are just back from the visit to our daughter in Cairns. As you'd guess travelling with a person who has mild dementia and considerable deficits from five strokes is not easy but we managed to make it work.
I must say Virgin Airlines were more helpful than last time and we had assistance at both airports. My son-in-law had a wheelchair given to him so we used that instead of taking our own. I worked out a routine for showering Ray in a small cubicle and showered him most days. We did have some problems with incontinence but my son-in-law had been given some wider pads and that helped "save" us from a lot of mess, and I can clean a tiolet or bathroom VERY quickly and quietly if I need to.
The weather was not the best, it is still not the "dry" so we had some showers most days, so they kept the running about local and where possible in the mornings so Ray got to have his afternoon nap which keeps his temper sweeter.
He didn't interact with the grandchildren a lot, he did his "find-a-word" puzzles and ignored them mostly but I sure did enjoy their company. And it was nice to have my daughter and her husband to chat to in the evenings when the kids and sometimes Ray had gone to bed.
I thought two weeks might have been too much for him but it took a few days for him to re-orientate and after that he seemed to just settle in and enjoy himself. With others doing the driving, the cooking, the cleaning, the shopping etc it was quite a good holiday for me too.
It is hard when others tell us to "take a break" but when the opportunity comes along we need to make the most of it and as much as we are able to relax and enjoy it. Which is what both Ray and I were able to do.