A little update from me, for those curious what's been happening (1 Viewer)

[Cluck]

I'll make sure the proper video is exactly 100 seconds for you @Shepard . I'm going to find a way of fixing my GoPro securely in the boot and then I'll go for a drive. It won't be for a couple of days though, it's going to be raining tomorrow and Friday but 'should' be dry on Thursday (and I'll have a couple of hours spare). I do need to go out though so I may say "sod the weather, I'm going for a drive" .

 

[Jonno]

Sounds tasty @Cluck curiois why did you blank your reg on pic but left it clear as day in vid lol....

 

[Cluck]

erm

oopsie

 

[Michael]

I'll make sure the proper video is exactly 100 seconds for you @Shepard . I'm going to find a way of fixing my GoPro securely in the boot and then I'll go for a drive. It won't be for a couple of days though, it's going to be raining tomorrow and Friday but 'should' be dry on Thursday (and I'll have a couple of hours spare). I do need to go out though so I may say "sod the weather, I'm going for a drive" .

Please don't bin it in lap 1

 

[steveg200]

Very nice Mr Cluck .will it keep up with your old 200

 

[Cluck]

Very nice Mr Cluck .will it keep up with your old 200

Shouldn't be difficult, that car was stripped of all the good bits and returned to pretty much standard by the person that bought it!

In seriousness, the Jag has a slightly better power-to-weight, by about 10-20hp per tonne, but that power is delivered in a very different manner. The 200 was very much "floor it, wait for the revs to hit about 3500rpm and then hold on tight and pray to whatever god you believe in". But if you were already in the 3500-6500rpm powerband then it did just pick up and go when you mashed the throttle. With a supercharged V8, and an 8-speed auto, the power in the Jag is far more immediate but also far more linear, there's no sense of a power spike anywhere. You hit the loud pedal and wonder how you're suddenly going so fast. It just "does". The 200 was probably more visceral, if that makes sense, far more highly strung and bloody entertaining for it, but it was hard work to really REALLY enjoy on the road. I haven't had a proper chance to test what the Jag is really capable of, but on one quick test (there's a bit of dual-carriageway immediately out of a 30mph limit, with nice clear visibility ahead) I learnt that the Jag doesn't hang about when it comes to accelerating quickly. And noisily

 

[Cluck]

Just when you think it's safe to return to something approaching normal, mother falls again and breaks her wrist

She was trying to go and see one of her friends over the road, despite us having told her that we have to stay at home by order of the government, and in trying to turn around she tripped over herself. She put her arm out to stop her fall and, well, the inevitable happened. Again, because father is stone deaf, he was unable to hear what would have been an obvious crack, so he just told me that she'd fallen over. In all honesty, mother seemed fine, no real distress and not complaining of major pain. I stuck an elasticated tube bandage over her wrist, packed an ice bag around it and she went to bed with some basic painkillers inside her.

Come this morning and her wrist had swollen up badly and the carer took one look and strongly advised we took a trip to A&E . Hospitals are the last place I want either myself or my mother to be right now but needs must.

It's amazing how much difference a nationwide lockdown makes to an A&E department. There was not a soul in sight when we arrived (save for the nurses of course!) and apparently they'd had their quietest Friday night in living memory. When people aren't playing sports, crashing their cars or getting drunk in pubs, there's very little for A&E to do! We were seen within 2 minutes, whisked straight into the x-ray and then dealt with by the doctor (Rosie, you were an absolute angel, thank you!) just a few minutes after that. Fracture confirmed and because it looked fairly "clean", they were going to pull it back into place

"Do you want to stay and watch?"

No, no I definitely do not want to stay and watch! I can watch whatever horror you throw at me on a cinema screen except for stuff involving eye balls and broken bones. Oh and people getting shot in the foot. I don't know why that last one makes me wince so much, but no, Cluck would very much like to go outside and wait. Cluck would like that very much. And whilst he was out there, waiting, he'd learn how to stop talking about himself in the 3rd-person form.

Where was I?

Ah yes

ow! OOOOOOWWWWW! OOOOWWWWWWWWW! NOOOOO!!! NO! OWWWWWWWWW!

Keeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrunch

I can't do it, it hurts too....oh, that's better

And with that, mother's wrist was back in place correctly and all plastered up. A quick x-ray confirmed that the bones were now back in perfect alignment (10 points for Hufflepuffindoor) and all we had to do now was go home and let mother rest.

Mother appears to be in zero pain, in stark contrast to what we went through with the very minor tiny hairline fracture in her other arm (which we are only finally just getting over, with 3 days now of it not having been mentioned!). She's had basic painkillers this morning and nothing since, she really doesn't seem to need them.

We're taking bets on what crisis we have to deal with in 6 weeks, when this fracture has healed. Any ideas?

 

[Michael]

@Cluck you are really having no rest, have you? Glad to hear that it got sorted like that, could have been a lot worse. And I'm sitting here moaning to the universe about my kids being overly demanding for attention in these days.... Shame on me.

 

[Cluck]

@Cluck you are really having no rest, have you? Glad to hear that it got sorted like that, could have been a lot worse. And I'm sitting here moaning to the universe about my kids being overly demanding for attention in these days.... Shame on me.

Our own worries are always "the worst thing in the world" from our own perspective, no need for the "shame on me"

A week or so ago I was moaning about the shops not having any rice or pasta because of panic buying caused by Corona. Yesterday, a close mate lost a work colleague to Corona . It's all relative.

EDIT: And no, not really "had a rest" since the beginning of October, following the hip-hop. The only saving grace with this incident is that mother is comfortable and 'behaving'

 

[Cluck]

And that's a year gone already

Don't quite know where the year has gone but I've survived, somehow

 

[Cluck]

Thought I'd give an update, if only to get stuff out of my system.

My mother came off a lot of the medication she was prescribed, following the utter clusterf*** that was January and February. I remain indebted to the 'crisis' team that came to our aid, without whom I think I'd have wound up in a padded cell by now (no joke). Since then, we've adjusted mother's waking routine and she's taken to it very well. She is also getting along brilliantly with the two carers/nurses that come in to get her up in the morning. It means she starts most days on a good footing. The last 2 weeks especially have seen more smiles in the morning than I can count.

Sadly, this has all come at a cost. A massive one.

As mother is starting to think with more clarity, she has become increasingly aware that she isn't well. For the last 18 - 24 months she has been on some medication or another that has messed with her ability to think. If it wasn't the codeine for her arthritis then it was the medication to calm her down during her worst excesses. Now free of all of that, she is thinking as clearly as anybody with her disease can and it is clearly scaring her. She has sought reassurance as to who she is, who the people are in the photos around the room (they are photos of her, my father, myself, my brother and a group photo of what's left of two branches of our extended family from a few years ago), obviously knowing that she knows who they are but the names escape her. The trouble is, she asks the names pretty much constantly, for hours on end. She apologises when she realises that I'm frustrated at explaining it again, apologising when I tell her it's not her fault, it's the disease doing it and that I am only frustrated at not being able to explain it better. Hour after hour, day after day. This has been my week this week. Couple that with the extreme (for us) heat and humidity and you stretch somebody like myself to near breaking point.

I am thankful that my mother is physically well. She is eating and drinking enough. She is conscious enough to understand a lot of things, and is also conscious enough to realise her own frustrations in not being able to verbalise exactly what she's trying to say.

Then we come to my father. He's aged, like myself, more than anybody should in 5 months. But unlike me, yet, he's already chosen to semi-distance himself from my mother emotionally. His wife is gone, he does his best to hide the fact that he's mourning that loss every time he looks into her eyes. It doesn't help when you have a moment like that which happened this afternoon, that faint glimmer of hope, that reminder that his wife is still somewhere in that shell, only to be reminded - less than 30 seconds later - that it was just a trick of the light, that back-stabbing c*** that Alzheimer's is.....

"You thought I was back didn't you?! Ha! Surprise motherfu**er, have a kick in the balls for being so silly"

The past 2 weeks have shown myself and my father what's in store. Mother will improve a little, as the lockdown eases and we get out more and start seeing her friends again, but she is a shadow of the person she was just before Christmas. Physically and mentally.

On the plus side, the mornings are wonderful. The joy in her eyes when she sees myself and my father when she comes through for breakfast in the morning is lovely. There are other wonderful moments that I immediately call my brother about, because I can't record the moments on camera. And I can be enormously thankful that things aren't as bad as they are for others. We live in a beautiful area. Mother has two people with her, every day, that she loves and they love her. I have a roof over my head and I have a V8 Jag. Life could be much MUCH worse.

 

[Cluck]

It's been a bit quiet here. Life ticks along, the Jag gets a few miles on the clock every week, mother's condition deteriorates slowly but surely.

Tomorrow (Thursday) she goes into a local care home to give father and myself some much needed respite. She's going in for a week, giving me the first opportunity I'll have had in 13 months to go and see some of my friends. I'm probably going to double the Jag's mileage in the space of a few days, which is good as it means I'll be able to properly open it up! The care home was recommended to us by the crisis team that helped us enormously back in February, as well as the carer that comes in every morning, so we're reassured that she's in the best hands. It's still a big leap into the unknown and despite us both knowing it's the best thing for us, we're both in a bit of a daze at the moment. The rest will do us both good, but it will be especially good for my father, who has been near breaking point recently (I'll confess, I'm not far behind him).

On the plus side, I saw something on the Project CARS Discord last week that got me physically shaking, for all the right reasons. Just over 2 years ago I was one of a few people that took some screenshots, at the request of SMS, of a particular car in the game. The car was due to be launched as a Hotwheels model and the screenshot was to be used as the basis of the packaging artwork. I uploaded a bunch of shots and promptly forgot about it. Until last week, when somebody posted a photo of the box.

"I wonder", I thought to myself and promptly opened the folder where the screenshots had been uploaded it.

"F**k me. Oh, er, sorry father, but bloody hell, look at this."

Within a few minutes I'd found one for sale on ebay and bought it. It arrived today....

There's the hotwheels car packaging. Here's the original screenshot (resized)

You can probably see why I was shaking when I saw the original picture on Discord. To say I'm chuffed to pieces would be an understatement.

I'm going to print the screenshot out at A2 size and then stick it in a deep-framed picture frame with the hotwheels package, I'm that chuffed.

With a bit of luck, the next week will see me slightly more relaxed, my father returning to a little of his former self and hopefully mother being cheered a bit too. We can but hope.

Oh and yes, I've already planned my route to include some tunnels for the Jag

 

[Cluck]

Been a long while since the last update and a LOT has changed in that time, and not for the better.

Mother fell ill again in December with yet another UTI, deteriorating so rapidly that she was admitted to hospital just 2 hours after we noticed the symptoms developing. She stayed there for 2 weeks and despite being 'medically fit' for discharge, we did not have carers in place to cope - mother now needed at least two carers to attend each visit, due to her increasingly aggressive behaviour towards them. Our previous had returned to the NHS and found us a new lady, who was brilliant, but she worked alone. As such, father insisted that the local council provide some emergency care whilst we tried to find a permanent replacement.

At this point, things went from bad to utterly shit.

The carers provided changed every day, often during the day too. Not to put too fine a point on it (and without getting too graphic), my mother spent the next 4 weeks either not 'going' to the loo or going so violently from both ends that she was in danger of going back into hospital with dehydration and malnutrition . Her eating was also dropping considerably, partly fuelled by being so unwell. It was also becoming a struggle to even get sufficient liquids in on a daily basis (which can lead to a UTI, amongst other things).

We were then extremely lucky to discover that our carer was now partnering up with a long-term colleague of hers from nursing, so we arranged a start date. Immediately mother's health improved a little, but we were starting from a VERY low point. Sadly, despite an initial 'boost', her health has deteriorated rapidly every since.

The local nurses did a weight estimate on both the 9th of March and the 29th. Mother's weight was estimated to have dropped by 8Kg in that time. Yes, 8 kilograms, not 8 pounds. She is desperately underweight but we have been fighting a losing battle for well over a month now to get sufficient nutrition into her, despite her being on a liquid diet.

Which leads us to where we are now. Yesterday afternoon the carers came in and one of them said to us "The two of us have been discussing Carol on the way over here and we both strongly feel that she is reaching the end of her journey"

Those words hit both myself and my father tremendously hard. We knew it was coming, we could see it with our own eyes, but to hear it, that's a different story. The carers have always vowed to be 100% honest with us and never shy away from telling us when things are bad. There's no "guide" to how long mother will be with us, it's a classic "how long is a piece of string" situation but their belief is that we are talking days, maybe a week or two if mother chooses to 'fight to live'. Sadly, my mother has long since given up trying to keep herself with us. Her fighting days are over, save for the battles she has with the carers some mornings!

I sold my business just 2 years and 2 weeks ago, to move down here to help my father out. In that time my mother has gone from being semi-independent to somebody that struggles to communicate and is 100% reliant on others for every aspect of her life. In early December she was still able to walk unaided. The decline is just 4 months has been staggering.

It's not a cheerful update I know, but I take some comfort in knowing that her inner conflict, the torment she is going through in her mind, will soon come to an end and she can find some peace at last. It will utterly wreck my father for a while, they have been married for just over 55 years.

I am only going to update this thread one more time, as and when the inevitable day arrives, then it will be locked and preserved.

 

[Cluck]

She fought a good fight and I will forever have the most enormous amount of pride in my heart for the courage, bravery, strength and sheer force of will that my mother showed in her last 72 hours of life.

I am just glad that her torment is over and that will be at peace at last. I love you mother, always have and always will. Everybody that had the pleasure of knowing you will miss you enormously.

My mother, Carol, passed away with myself, my father and my brother at her side. She was at home, in her own surroundings and had one of us with her for almost all but 5 hours of the her last 72. She can have been in no doubt about the amount of affection and admiration we held for her.

 

[grobi0815]

She fought a good fight and I will forever have the most enormous amount of pride in my heart for the courage, bravery, strength and sheer force of will that my mother showed in her last 72 hours of life.

I am just glad that her torment is over and that will be at peace at last. I love you mother, always have and always will. Everybody that had the pleasure of knowing you will miss you enormously.

My mother, Carol, passed away with myself, my father and my brother at her side. She was at home, in her own surroundings and had one of us with her for almost all but 5 hours of the her last 72. She can have been in no doubt about the amount of affection and admiration we held for her.

my condolences @Cluck

 

[Cluck]

Dementia is a terribly cruel disease, it robs the person of their self, who they are, their dignity, their pride and everything that makes a person "a person". Next time you look into the eyes of a loved one, imagine how it feels to see nothing in return. That's the heartache that all family members go through, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

There is no cure for dementia at the moment, there isn't even enough known to diagnose it accurately, early enough, but progress IS being made. It's too late for us and my mother of course - and too late for the millions of families out there that have gone through, or are going through, what we have been through and what my mother has been through - but without more funding, more research and more help, a cure will never be found and more people will have to suffer.

If you can find it within yourself to support a national, or local, dementia charity then please do so. Families carry an enormous burden on their shoulders and there are some charities out there that can, and do, ease some of that burden. Nobody should have to go through what my family have been through but, more importantly, nobody should have to go through what my mother went through.

 

[Cluck]

I appreciate that some might want to offer their condolences but I am locking this thread.

EDIT: Unlocked now. I just needed my words to be the last in this thread for a few days.

 

[hinesy32]

Hi @Cluck

I'm so so sorry for your loss. I hope you are finding these recent days okay. As you have said, dementia is a cruel cruel disease for which there is no cure. My mum was diagnosed almost 7 years ago. As I live in England and she is back home in Belfast, my dad cares for her 6 days out of 7 at the moment. It is extremely tough even at this stage. I can no longer speak to her on the phone, which is heartbraking. A pandemic thrown into the mix means I last saw her in person last October.

You know yourself you did everything you could for her, and your dad, to support her. Always take comfort in that.

See you on track tomorrow night

 

[Cluck]

Cheers hinesy and I hope you get to see your mum again soon

Yeah, there are certain things that the pandemic has made incredibly tough. From my brother not being able to come down very much - and not at Christmas, meaning he missed his last XMAS with her - to mother not being able to go out for tea or coffee with her friends, to being stuck at home with myself and my father (something I wouldn't wish on anybody ), those things combined with the other things she went through, meant her time was cut dramatically short. That said, given that the carers are certain she knew what she was going through, given that she even said to me only a few months ago "It's cruel what you and your father are having to cope with" and she had always expressed a wish to "be whisked off to Dignitas the moment I go 'gaga'", there's a part of us that is relieved, on her behalf, that her suffering has come to this rather premature end. It doesn't stop me missing her enormously and, as I said to the celebrant late last week

"This house is just a house now, it is no longer 'a home'. Mother made it a home."

We have taken enormous comfort and, goddammit, HUGE amounts of pride, in reading the cards from our family, her friends, our friends, people mother worked with, people mother taught, people that simply met mother for a brief time. The one thing that stands out, head and shoulders above everything else, and that's how much respect everybody had for her and how much she was loved by almost everybody she met. She seemed to lift everybody's lives that she touched and, in that respect, she reminds me a lot of one of our very own RSR members. There really are some people in this world that we are better people for knowing, my mother was one of them.

The funeral is taking place next Wednesday and, as per her wishes, she will be laid to rest in a willow coffin with a humanist ceremony that will be a celebration of her life. If any of you can spare a thought, around 1pm on the 5th of May (that's 1pm UK time) then it would mean a lot to us