You know that dream where you are running and running and not getting anywhere? well life feels like that for me right now. I have spent so much time going to and from the hospital visiting my mum that there doesn't seem to be much time to do anything else. So the housework is behind, the laundry needs a catch-up and I need a housekeeper to do all the 'extras'.

My new course work is getting neglected as I am so tired at night. I am over a week behind with the reading, questions etc. I said that I would be fine with it if life went on as normal and nothing dramatic happened to Ray or Mum. I guess Mum falling and breaking a hip at 90 qualifies as dramatic!

I can never undertand why when someone is transferred to a care facility they are well looked after but when they go from there to the hospital for more intensive treatment, like Mum has had to with the broken hip, that care is suspended until they come back? No-one from the Lodge goes in to visit and a relative, preferrably the one who is the holder of the Power of Attorney, which is ME has to take full responsibility for care again.

However there is some good news as yesterday as Mum got transferred to a little geriatric unit about ten minutes from here. It used to be a little cottage hospital when the population this end of the Central Coast was sparce in the late '40s but now the population is 350,000 the small hospital has been renovated and is just used for convalescing oldies. So elder care is their speciality and they will understand how Mum is and what to do for her (I hope).

So today I went to her room in the Lodge and got some nightdresses and cardigans and a dressing gown and took them to the hospital. The slippers were beyond belief, one very old pair and three odd shoes were all I could find in the wardrobe. Mum has been wearing slipper socks but that will not do for where she is now apparently. So one new pair of slippers for a new phase in her life.

Yesterday I went to see the nursing home where mum is going when she leaves hospital. It is a little old fashioned but it too has just had a renovation so there is a new outside deck with deck furniture and in the rooms the walls are freshly painted. BUT instead of having her own room she will be sharing with two other ladies. It is not what I want for her but the carers, trained by the old facility, will be well-trained and kind and some of the other residents will be familiar faces as they were once at the Lodge but like her have become more frail and less active.

I have never thought of Mum as being in a nursing home as the Lodge where she was was fairly new and had a nice courtyard with sails to prevent the oldies getting overheated in summer, the internal walking track, the bus trips out once a week, the concert parties and other entertainment , a lot of willing volunteers, a lot going for it. She had her own large airy room with an ensuite toilet and shower. The place she is going to is a nursing home. I am glad she is so far down the track now that she will not notice. Then I won't feel guilty either.

All of this has been a tremendous strain, on me and Ray as in the most part he has to go where I go. The trips to the hospital, 40 minutes each way in the pouring rain have taken about three hours out of each day. But I don't regret it. It is true you get better treatment when you have relatives coming in and out who question what is happening, how you are, what the treatment is etc. And the ladies she has shared with have been very nice and eager to help with this "poor old lady" they have found themselves as companions to. And maybe it has given them a better understanding of living with dementia.

So on Friday she will have the staples out and then probably be transferred out as they can do little else for her again unless the physios say she has a chance of walking. That is what I am praying for right now - that she will walk again. After the pain has lessened and she is off the painkillers that might happen. She is still wiggling those toes and there is no sign of atrophy so it might happen.

People say: "do something for Sue" and to tell you the truth I no longer know what to do. Ten years as a caregiver, to more than one person, is a long way down a very muddy track.