Again, Catching Up…

Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging.

We had a very bizarre blip in my mother’s mental stability last week; the Adult Mental Health team wanted to increase her dosage of a drug called memantine from the very low introductory dose of 5mg up to 20mg, which is apparently the normal therapeutic dose. As the first step in getting from one to the other, they asked me to double the daily dose, which I duly did – with spectacular results.

It was one of the most unpleasant 24 hours I’ve known, involving stopping my mother burning the house down twice, hauling her back from multiple attempts to walk to the shops (3.5 miles away!) at eleven o’clock at night, outright refusal to go to bed and when I did finally persuade her to go to bed, she was up again ten minutes later and we had to do it again…. and again…. and again. Her various other medications – for blood pressure and heart failure – were rejected flatly and when I insisted she took them, she tried to hide them in her breakfast cereal – then threw that bowlful away and ate four more bowlfuls, one after another.

That was the end of the memantine. My GP, whom I called the following morning, of course, confirmed I was right to stop giving it altogether and after another 24 hours the situation had returned to normal.

It’s taken me a long time to catch up on the lost sleep, since I rarely get more than 6 hours anyway and I’m by nature one of those who likes a nice uninterrupted 8 hours.

In the meantime, the various animal dramas have continued.

The geese are exemplary parents and the goslings are doing very well, both growing strongly.

Mother Duck’s 5 goslings are feathering out nicely now, getting big and sturdy. Patchy lost another duckling in some viciously cold torrential rain we experienced one night, but the remaining eight are now liberated to run around the yard again, too big for the predators now. Black Duck, alas, lost all her ducklings one way and another, and after moping for a few days, seems now to be adjusting. Lavender Girl is still sitting tight in the workshop, right behind the door – she pops out for a bath and a quick gulp of food every couple of days, then goes straight back again.

The ferret meeps are meeps no longer – they’re active, playful, sturdy young ferrets. Ivy is back in a nursery run ready for her next litter, looking very healthy and active but with a distinct bulge in the middle. Holly, slim from end to end, is doing sole-parent duty for Yarrow as well as her own four, but Uncle Angus is now sharing that cage with the family. Here’s Angus trying to sleep while Yarrow and one of the sandies bounced on his hammock!

Abe has been working on half-pass again – he can do it superbly going from left to right, but refuses to even try going from right to left. I wonder if perhaps it’s uncomfortable for him with his sarcoids, so I’ve decided to give him time off to concentrate on his health. George’s new roller has arrived and fits, so I’ll work with him more instead. Horses don’t forget anything (rather like elephants!) and Abe won’t come to any harm taking a few weeks off in his education.

I’ll finish with the ferrets – this was their first trip into the house yesterday, where they spent a few hours in the lounge getting a lot of playing and handling from me, along with some gentle but firm nip-training when they experimentally chew on my fingers!