End of a week – or start of the weekend ? Ha – there’s a question !
DJ started his day today in typical ‘Friday’ fashion – impatient and very very grumpy. How does he do it, when he basically has no evident awareness of which day it is…..
Waiting for the Day Centre transport is always a trial on a Friday. This morning he wanted to solve his impatience with the waiting by going back to bed…….. ChickPea was NOT popular for disagreeing with this decision…… Attempting distraction with yet another cup of tea didn’t really work – though did help his fluid intake for the day.
But the herbal tablets ‘to relieve anxiety’ presumably took effect eventually and helped him through the morning, as he seemed pleased to be going out when the transport eventually arrived, and the staff did not complain about his day when they brought him home. Great things, these. But disappointing that like so many things over these months, they have been a ‘last ditch’ finding. I tend to expect such things not to offer benefit, and sold merely as a money-making prop for the hypochondiacal . But I’m revising this opinion.
We tried the ‘standard medical solution’ to this problem of anxiety/restlessness/agitation (which all too often progresses to the disaster scenario of actual aggression) – in fact, I think we tried most of the sedatives available to modern medicine. The first dose of anything was usually helpful, but thereafter we were into a deteriorating and disintegrating downhill spiral of horror…….. And each time that he’s been admitted to hospital he has rapidly been not only sedated but seriously over-sedated in their efforts to control him…….. You can imagine the heartache of then trying to prove that he can be fit enough to get home, and that we can manage him ok at home. (At the moment).
Being a health professional – even from the ‘front line’ – has not gained any special privileges or credibility in these situations. If anything, you see the staff glaze over and stop listening…..
So, in desperation, in effort to try and continue home care, I tried these herbal panaceas.
And DJ seems happier, and better able to cope. TH is less aggrieved and better able to cope. And I am certainly happier and better able to cope.
And ………very keen to keep their effectiveness by not over-using them. So I try to use all the methods of distraction that I can think of, keeping the herbals in reserve as a ‘fall-back remedy’. This means that we end up using them just two or three times in a week. (And have to remember NOT to give them over to Respite placements….. when we did that they used them every day and they stopped working……. and we had to track down another herbal formulation that did work…..)
I’m not sure that I can finish this with ‘they all lived happily ever after’………. but the herbals are certainly helping at the moment.
DJ started his day today in typical ‘Friday’ fashion – impatient and very very grumpy. How does he do it, when he basically has no evident awareness of which day it is…..
Waiting for the Day Centre transport is always a trial on a Friday. This morning he wanted to solve his impatience with the waiting by going back to bed…….. ChickPea was NOT popular for disagreeing with this decision…… Attempting distraction with yet another cup of tea didn’t really work – though did help his fluid intake for the day.
But the herbal tablets ‘to relieve anxiety’ presumably took effect eventually and helped him through the morning, as he seemed pleased to be going out when the transport eventually arrived, and the staff did not complain about his day when they brought him home. Great things, these. But disappointing that like so many things over these months, they have been a ‘last ditch’ finding. I tend to expect such things not to offer benefit, and sold merely as a money-making prop for the hypochondiacal . But I’m revising this opinion.
We tried the ‘standard medical solution’ to this problem of anxiety/restlessness/agitation (which all too often progresses to the disaster scenario of actual aggression) – in fact, I think we tried most of the sedatives available to modern medicine. The first dose of anything was usually helpful, but thereafter we were into a deteriorating and disintegrating downhill spiral of horror…….. And each time that he’s been admitted to hospital he has rapidly been not only sedated but seriously over-sedated in their efforts to control him…….. You can imagine the heartache of then trying to prove that he can be fit enough to get home, and that we can manage him ok at home. (At the moment).
Being a health professional – even from the ‘front line’ – has not gained any special privileges or credibility in these situations. If anything, you see the staff glaze over and stop listening…..
So, in desperation, in effort to try and continue home care, I tried these herbal panaceas.
And DJ seems happier, and better able to cope. TH is less aggrieved and better able to cope. And I am certainly happier and better able to cope.
And ………very keen to keep their effectiveness by not over-using them. So I try to use all the methods of distraction that I can think of, keeping the herbals in reserve as a ‘fall-back remedy’. This means that we end up using them just two or three times in a week. (And have to remember NOT to give them over to Respite placements….. when we did that they used them every day and they stopped working……. and we had to track down another herbal formulation that did work…..)
I’m not sure that I can finish this with ‘they all lived happily ever after’………. but the herbals are certainly helping at the moment.
