Caring for ageing aunty

Dear aged Aunty even forgets to eat.  She sits and stares out of the window at the windows and walls of rooms of other sheltered residents.  Even when food is next to her, she doesn't eat it unless reminded.
A month ago she fell, breaking her hip.  Or maybe she fell because her hip spontaneously broke. Whatever.  She stayed in hospital a remarkably short time and last week came home - minus her zimmer frame because the hospital forgot, or may she left it in the ambulance ... whatever.  She can't walk without it - what care is that?

So the really caring people, the volunteers from the local St Vincent de Paul Society ran around, one getting her a zimmer frame in the next few hours, which meant that volunteer didn't get to eat supper with her husband.  That's wrong.  You have to get your priorities sorted and that means voluntary work comes after family, but that caring volunteer said quite reasonably that you couldn't leave an old lady alone with no means of moving.  When she came back with the frame, Aunty was in bed, with the door unlocked. We have to get a key safe, so that we can lock the door safely, yet get in to help her.

Then, on Monday, the new carers who deliver food, forgot lunch, and Aunty sat there staring out of the window at the walls and windows with no food until, again, the same SVdP caring person arrived and realised what had happened and whipped her up an omelette in the microwave.

Aunty can't do the shopping herself, or ring the news agent to deliver her papers, or organise the delivery of the drugs she must take every day, or feed herself, let alone cook.  She hasn't unpacked her boxes from when she moved in there in 2009, and doesn't know where her clothes are.  She doesn't do her own laundry but someone else must come and fetch it and take it away and do it for her, and then put it back in her drawers.

Her drawers are mixed and muddled.  When she went into hospital, one of the SVdP people couldn't find her nighties.  I found them when I visited last weekend; they were in the wardrobe under her outdoor hats and gloves, with some cassette tapes.  I've put them in the drawers next to her bed.

If you have a child, a toddler, you know you have to mind them.  You give them food, wash their clothes, wash them, and put them to bed.  Aunty now needs minding like that.  She even asked me to cut her nails.  And volunteers can't be doing all that for a non-family member.  Soon Aunty will have to move from her sheltered flat to a room in a care home.