Back in May, 2022, SWMBO had her fifth inoculation against the dreaded Covid virus. Three days after the injection she was admitted to hospital with enormous blood clots in both lungs. Fortunately, the clots were reduced in size. Unfortunately her dementia worsened and there were residual health issues arising from her clots.

As a result, I was no longer able to care for her at home. Fortunately with assistance from staff of our carers group, I was able to have SWMBO moved into her own room in near by permanent residential care.

Sadly, she is bed ridden, lies permanently on her back and is unable to move without assistance from three staffers. She requires hand feeding and the staff attend to her personal needs.

Her memory has been badly impacted by her illness. She does not recognise me or remember my name. The same situation applies to any of her old friends who occasionally visit her and she has absolutely no memory of her previous life. Conversation is an one way street as her brain is unable to process talk.

On the positive side of things, the staff at her care home are well trained, skilful, thoughtful, kind and tend to SWMBO as a real person, not just as an object in a bed.

In the beginning of her residential care I visited her every day. I’d come away feeling miserable and wishing I could do more for her, or should have done more before in my years as her full time carer at home.

One of the senior staff observed my distress took me aside and we had a lengthy discussion about my situation. She was easy to talk to and knew full well what was going on in my head. Obviously she had observed this situation many, many times and had received in specific training to assist next of kin to residents.

Many, many topics were covered and my guilt feelings were discussed in depth. When I left her office I felt a massive load had been removed from my shoulders. Over a year has now gone by and my guilt feelings have all but disappeared. My sadness for SWMBO will never leave me but my day to day existence is no longer filled with unhappiness.

My Landcover activities and my Harley Davidson adventures are pleasant memories and my love of photography has replaced them as my main non domestic activity.

It’s great to be sitting here at the computer, putting words together for publishing in creakingbones.com.

Next time I’ll add a few photos to show you the fun I’m getting from photography.

Hoo roo for now.