I can hear Anna arguing upstairs with the carer. She does not recognise her, she says. It is the bank holiday weekend and half-term and Daisy is away. We have three regular carers, but the fourth carer who comes to cover for them has a difficult time. There are two or three who do this, they know Anna but she does not know them.
Holidays are always disruptive. I used to make a joke about that, that holidays are a bad idea because they make people dissatisfied with the rest of their lives. Better to live all your life as if you are on holiday.
Now we talk of consistency and continuity for Anna, but even when it is going very well there have to be disruptions to the routine. And she likes treats. Today we are driving to the country to see a friend.
I can feel the tension in me, hoping that we will have a good day. Anna is refusing to let the carer help her. I have to decide whether it will make it better or worse if I intervene.
‘They hate me,’ Anna says. I try to reassure her and go back downstairs. I can hear some cries – could be Anna or the children next door, getting up.
Our lunch with Nancy goes a treat. Nancy has written an article about her work in a burns unit, which I would like to read, and we tell her how Anna still has publications to come next year, a literary article on TS Eliot and Wilfred Bion, which has been hanging around on the internet for years, a reprint of her most cited paper on nursing, Where Angels Fear To Tread, and of course her chapter on The Unfaithful Brain, about her experience of Alzheimers.
There is a moment of sudden sadness, as Anna objects to a question from Nancy about my work. She feels left out, left behind again. You’re retired, you’ve done your bit, we say cheerily, insensitively, as she goes deep into what she has lost.
The moment passes and Anna is enjoying her beef and pasta. And I take pleasure in manipulating two forks alternately, so that she keeps eating. An example of a small triumph, rewarded with a smile.
Back home, in the evening, Anna again cannot make sense of the help she is getting from the carer. She feels that she is being assaulted by a stranger, and for two hours we talk about nothing else.
I think of Eliot and his life:
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder ‘Do I dare?’ and ‘Do I dare?’
There are times when I think that having a carer is a lot more trouble than not.