Bringing you up to date...

So...Mum has been out of hospital since late December. I have moved in with her to help out but it is pretty clear now that she is no longer able to manage independently like she did before. Her arm is recovering slowly but she is needing a lot of help during the day and night. Her mobility is poor and she is not as confident as she was moving about using her walker.

Will and I have been prepared for quite a while to make the move back to help out but when it finally comes down to it you are never as prepared as you thought you were.

I have discussed the situation with my brothers and sister re the options; caring for her at home or moving her into a care home. Everyone agreed that the first option, though the hardest, is the right one and it is the one that Mum would prefer. For me I cannot spend the best part of two years caring for Will's mum and then put my Mum in a home. She is best off in her own home surrounded by her own things. However, it cannot not just be a commitment that Will and I are prepared to make because it will affect all of my siblings in some way as we will need them to step in at some point to give Will and I a break. They are all prepared to do that.

So for the last two months I have been caring for Mum with regular breaks to catch up on sleep with my brothers and sister taking over for a few nights. Mum started off with two Care visits a day, morning and evening. Initially they were NHS nurses following up from her hospital stay. After a few weeks the Local authority took over and we had 'Reablement' nurses. As we moved into 'long term care' we had to undergo a means test to see if we have to contribute to ongoing care and of course, we had to, and the 'Domiciliary' nurses took over. We are currently waiting to see who will take up the care visits moving forward. We have stopped the evening visit but will still need the morning visit when they help Mum to change, wash and shower.

Mum has also been having regular 'Physio' visits and has exercises to practice daily which we mostly manage to do but it is not her favourite part of the day.

I have to say it has been very hard managing everything on my own but happily Will arrives before the end of the month. He has been busy tying up loose ends in Australia and battling to keep the latest Possum neighbours out of the roof of Blue Moon and the new bedrooms. He has set up a timed watering system to keep our fruit trees going. The chickens have gone to new homes. Most have gone to live next door with or neighbours after theirs were in a fox attack but our three favourites have gone to live with Andrew in Toowoomba. He has made his last cheese, for now, at the Cheese Factory, but they are hoping he will be back one day and are keen to keep him on as a consultant whilst here.

Ros, Andrew and Tessa are all keen to visit Frogknot regularly and keep an eye on things while we are away and of course we have our wonderful neighbours too. Will and Tessa have recorded 'How to' videos on how to deal with all the issues that may arise for people visiting.

He flies out today (Feb 26th) and will get here tomorrow (Feb 27th).

It's going to be the start of a whole new chapter...