You never do enough
as a carer. Until another carer sees what you are doing, and you are told that
you do so much.
I’ve been living in
a world of static electricity. Building up charges. Zapping the shit out of the
world. So much changed in the past year, and I’ve written so little about it.
There’s daily care, as a carer comes in and assists with baths and banter.
The carers are regulars, semi-regulars, or
one-offs. We were supposed to have four regular carers in, taking turns. One
never materialised. She was off temporarily, permanently. So the fourth regular
slot was taken up by a series of one-offs and semi-regulars.
There’s only one
reason to mention this. Today, instead of a regular, there was a new one-off. She’s
never been here before = I’ll have to walk you through the routine. But I don’t
do that. Instead, we just go through the routine without the rehearsal.
Mobility is reduced.
So I start helping my mother on the long journey to the bathroom. This is
upstairs, not an adapted room downstairs. I believe she needs the exercise, and
needs the routine, even though it’s a bit of a struggle up there on the worst
days. On the best days, there’s singing and we share jokes.
She’s grumpy.
Tired.
Grumpy and tired and tired and grumpy.
Ordinarily, a
helping hand to the arm would be accepted and off we’d go. This time, there’s
rejection and outcry. I have to explain to the carer that she’s not usually
like this. It isn’t a great impression to drop on a new carer. Clearly, I’m
evil.
As usual, I’m surprised
by what happens next. We run through…walk through…we walk through the house. Standard
items. The metal frame, to assist walking. Static blasts. I’m hit by tiny
lightning bolts. We reach the stairs.
This is a quiet climb. I make sure she’s
around the corner and safe in a chair before I turn the other way and hit the
CD on-switch for background music. The carer comes up and turns to the
bathroom. I make my way downstairs past all the extra rails and supports.
Quickly, I fix a missing detail. New
clothes. I race back up and the carer is there to ask me about that. I hang the
dress on a hook and point to the other clothes hanging from racks. Then I am
downstairs and folding towels or seeing to other things that must be done
sometime. The time is now.
With that stuff out
of the way, I can throw on a coffee.
The return journey
is quiet. It’s into the chair in front of the TV to watch music unfurl.
Followed by a meal, once settled in the chair. I explain that my mother had a
day out yesterday, so that takes a hell of a lot of energy away and she’s
clearly tired this morning.
And the carer understands that. My mother
settles in the chair, snug and warm against the contrast of the weather just
outside that window. What happens next, to surprise me?
The
carer says she’s amazed at everything I do and she thanks me for my help. I
explain that I don’t feel that I do all that much, but I do what I can.
Apparently, I do a lot. It sneaks up on you. Over the years, you see problems
and you conjure solutions.
One day, you look at all this and there’s a
system. Where did that come from? The big danger is taking everything away and
destroying what the person was before the trouble began – hastening decline in
the rush to make things easier.
I fought the good fight for years,
introducing gradual change. Trying to keep things going. It’s a mountainous
climb with the prospect of terrible slips to the bottom of that cliff. Balance.
Pacing. Timing. A little luck. The patience of a saint that you throw away at every
turn. The most frustrating thing about frustration is that it’s so fucking
frustrating. No, really.
Do your best to
provide assistance that doesn’t wipe everything away. Recognise that you’ll
need to step in hard and fast to provide assistance that takes away danger and
eliminates most of the risk.
The carer thinks that I do a lot to help. I
suppose aloud that she goes into houses where she doesn’t see that. She nods
and leaves the thought hanging. That doesn’t mean she goes into the homes of
evil people who don’t care. She’ll visit houses where extra help just can’t be
given. The family member is overwhelmed by the difficulty. Or the underlying
health conditions rule out certain ways of running a household, leading to
impossible situations.
I’ve been in enough conversations with
healthcare professionals to know that there are uncaring fuckers out there in
the world. Those uncaring carers try to dump the cared-for into other hands.
They don’t think twice about sending the bewildered off to hospital. I fought
to keep my mother out of hospital last year when her health took a temporary
dive.
We got by at home – where everything is
familiar – and that was for the best. A struggle, but better than the
alternative. Increased risk of increased risk in a hospital.
Well. I was told
that I do a lot. It doesn’t feel that way, as the routine, the machine, the
system, came about gradually. Four years of that, working it out by myself,
before I knew I had to call more help in. And it’s been a year of adjusting
that additional help. Here I am now, grabbing meals when I can. Taking blasts
from miniature lightning bolts. Enjoying coffee. Typing it up and letting it
fly on the internet.
So I’ll publish this and see to pills.
Arrange fantastic soup for myself. See what the day brings and what the night
drops on me. Routine. I’ll try to avoid static electricity blasts. In this, I
know I’ll fail. But as long as that’s the only thing I fail at in a day of
caring, I’ll take it.
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