You're right, it's not what I wanted to hear but that doesn't mean it's not what I need to hear.
I think we've been thinking for the past several months "thank god we didn't move him into a home" having seen how ravaged they have been by the virus. And the carers have been doing such a good job at keeping him engaged, active, and looked after. His weekly 'music group' has been moved onto Zoom and we've started being able to FaceTime/Zoom call with him through one of the carers' laptops.
In the evenings he mostly sits in silence, engrossed in his endless stream of detective series. (He cannot get enough of Poirot, Midsomar Murders, Lewis etc.) He even sometimes seems annoyed if we call him in the evening when he's watching his programmes. The problem is he is constantly making himself coffee and insisting to the neighbours he doesn't have the ingredients. This might in part be because we have tried to limit his intake by stashing the coffee/sugar away after setting him up with several cups to just add boiled water to. We also started saying to him back in March, when people were panic buying, that we needed to limit our use of things because supplies were low in shops. I see now that this might just contribute to anxiety.
I think we were hoping that the reason he was putting so much coffee and sugar into each cup was because he's lost his sense of taste.
He can be quite lucid still at times and getting him into a home will be a huge loss of his independence, routine and identity. He's so happy surrounded by all his things, with the garden to potter in (he paints the fence all year round) and his bird table to watch. I think we're all pretty certain that moving him to a home (notwithstanding the obvious risks with the virus) will probably hasten his deterioration. But you're probably right. Even if he doesn't need 24/7 care, he probably needs to have someone there for every unpredictable moment he does. I'm unfamiliar with the term "sundowning" but will look into it.
Thanks for being so forthright.
