DEMENTIA CARE: ACTUALLY STAYING THE FUCK HOME.

We’re shielding. The shielding letter says so. And, more importantly, I fucking say so. Shielding guidelines/regulations/recommendations/rules/political notions are to be relaxed thanks to a decree from on high…elsewhere.

   To reach for parliamentary language, that is being done in another place.

   David Bowie will tell you that this is not America. This is certainly not England. I’m sitting in a part of Scotland that is craving rain, to keep the Covidiots off the streets as much as possible.

   In Scotland, no, we are not relaxing the rules for shielding those in vulnerable categories. Every single day is an adventure, and I must keep a sound mind as I run over the risks of admitting people to this house.

   Daily carers are essential. One woman comes in, once a day. There was that occasion when one young man turned up, but there’s no way this particular dementia sufferer would put up with a man assisting with the shower. A replacement carer quickly arrived.

   Yes, they say that sooner or later you’ll meet everyone in the system. We didn’t think that meant everyone, including the male carers who weren’t ever going to be assigned to us. But there you go.

   Our regulars are mostly regular. We’re assigned a team of four. Beyond that, you end up with people who fill in regularly, so it’s really a team of six. That team of six is currently down to two official regulars and two unofficial ones.

   The carer shifts run four days at a time. I admit two people to the house on an average week. Gloved, masked, disposable aprons flapping, they know the risks the same as I do. This is an essential service.

   When it’s not an average week, I’ll admit three different people to the house. I only leave the house to go to the bins. Shopping deliveries are in hand, as are prescription deliveries. I take a few parcels in. Those are left at the door by the delivery people. I deal with the outer packaging and then wash my hands in the official manner.

   Occasionally, I’ll have to request a nurse.

   Shielding someone with dementia and a respiratory problem can never be 100% shielding. If the daily carers didn’t assist with bathing, I’d have to go back to the old-fashioned method of assisting my mother to the shower. Getting her in there, turning her so that she could sit on the electric bath chair…

   Swishing the double shower curtain arrangement closed (black over white), and then requesting the night clothes that she’d eventually hand through. I work the shower. She uses the soapy sponge. The towel goes through and the towel comes back. Clothes are handed in. We’ll deal with socks when she comes back out.

   Sounds like a plan.

   It’s a plan from earlier in the dementia, and it worked far better then. I had to resort to the old plan this year, before the pandemic was official, when a carer didn’t turn up at all. And it was too late to phone in and ask for a replacement.

   Just went for it.

   Not easy.

   An old plan, for an easier time. There is no such thing as an easier time in the history of dementia caring, but you will look back on those earlier days with the nostalgia of pros and cons tinting that view. It isn’t rose-coloured.

   From that experience of returning to the old plan, I knew, when the pandemic changed everything, that I needed those daily carers. I was asked to cut back on the number of daily visits. (Phone call. Could you drop down from three days a week? No, we’re on seven days and we need them.)

   We need them. The old-fashioned plan, the swish of two shower curtains, is for emergencies only. It would take too long, now, with the concentration far more muddied. Two people a week. Acceptable risk. No contact with anyone else. And even that contact is limited, gloved, and masked. With a disinfectant spray handy after the carer is gone.

I cast a glance across the border into the sunny counties of England…packed with Covid zombies stumbling around picnic fields and beaches. Only a glance, though. I wouldn’t want to catch anything.

   The hope is that enough English people are scared and stay indoors no matter what the blonde gibbon in Downing Street says. Yah-boo, get Covid done. That comment is a disservice to gibbons. Gibbons, look away now. The less said about advisers, special or otherwise, the better.

Scottish advice is to STAY THE FUCK INDOORS. That’s it. Stay in. Or, to go into awkward spelling of Caledonian pronunciation, stey in. I’m staring at the latest figures for those with the virus, real or suspected, stuck in intensive care.

   At midnight on the last day of May: seven cases.

   Staying in was designed to protect the health service…no hospitals were ruined during this outbreak. As guidelines are relaxed in England, we watch, week after week, to see what difference that will make to disease levels north and south of the border.

   It’s a desperate gamble with English lives, and it’s appalling. I think of my desperate gamble, taking the risk of admitting two people to the house every week…for up to half an hour each day.

   That’s nowhere near the same risk as throwing barbeque parties, or heading to the beaches and being herded into tight crowds to make room for the rescue helicopters – pictures I saw the other day that defied belief. Believe it.

   Stay the fuck indoors. I’m not waiting to hear that the shielding procedure is being loosened. No. I’m waiting to hear that shielding is going to be extended beyond mid-July. Going by the date of the shielding letter and the twelve-week limit imposed, that’s when shielding stops.

   I must hold the view that shielding never stops. Truly vulnerable cases must shield until the vaccine is available. Harsh. But our big lesson learned is that chief medical officers think themselves immune to the rules imposed on others.

   Would these special people in high places break those rules for Ebola? Yes, different disease. And yes, it kills too rapidly to spread globally the way Covid-thickteen spread. But you get the idea.

   Special advisers would shit bricks over a Covid-style disease that had you spitting blood out of your eyeballs. They wouldn’t be visiting holiday homes, then. Or going off to bang photogenic blonde mistresses. Any of the other shitty moves we’ve been reading about.

   Stay the fuck indoors. I’m Nick Angry, Agent of Shielding.

Also, thank fuck that this is not America. If you ever wondered what a zombie apocalypse would look like in its early stages, then cast your eyes westward fucking ho.

   No, I can’t ignore the mistakes made in Scotland. When the dust settles over our corpses, someone in another century will find a way to compare infection and death rates the world over using technology not-yet-invented…

   That poor bastard will stare at the different methods countries use to determine what the fuck happened. We’ll get into jaded analysis of statistics labelled under the catch-all, per head of population. In some countries, the spike relates to the head of government. We’ll say no more on that front, except, perhaps, to compare a Space Cadet in Brazil against a Force for Calm in New Zealand.

I’m taking too great a risk in arranging a nurse visit. No, wait. That’s essential. Masked. Gloved. Apron. Caution. No barbeque here. What will the world look like, when we are done? All the fences, repainted. That’s about it.

No, I didn’t repaint the fence. There’s enough wood-stain there to paint a bit and run out. Then what? Don’t go out looking for more. Do you seriously think all those fence-painters just happened to have huge tubs sitting handy, when the shit went down?

   I painted the fences when the fences went up. The wood-stain endured. Roll end credits. When I went out during the earlier stages of the pandemic, I went once for prescriptions – and then took advantage of the volunteer service as it came in – and I had to risk it for a biscuit and other essential foodstuffs by shopping for edibles and drinkables when the delivery system imploded.

   Shopping and walking it all home. No public transport.

   And, yes, I still go to the end of the garden and put the bins out late at night when no one is passing by as I dump the stuff.

   That’s it. So many routines stopped being routine as those were activities conducted outside, elsewhere, over those hills and far, far, away. I don’t have a holiday home. But if I had one, I wouldn’t be going there.

   Will I ease lockdown when the shielding term expires? I’ll have to see if the volunteer prescription delivery system is still going, or switch to a regular prescription delivery service instead. Pharmacies are tiny and crowded at the best of times. At the worst of times, they are on reduced hours and you should avoid going there if at all possible.

   Any old time is a bad time to be ill. Don’t be ill during an apocalypse. The bounce back, to resumed clinics and to a backlog of minor surgical cases restored to the rosters…that’s something I hope is already planned for.

   This is why we don’t leave blonde gibbons in charge of our own personal fiefdoms. Gibbons, blonde or otherwise, look away again. It’s up to us to refuse to come out of lockdown if it isn’t safe. And we know it isn’t safe. There’s no vaccine. And there’s no guaranteed safety with a vaccine, either. We’ll discover the duration of protection at our peril.

   Let’s hope it’s not going to be a long, dark, bleak fucking winter. In other news, official priority supermarket deliveries for the vulnerable are finally kicking in on a semi-regular basis. Weekly, one guy turns up and leaves stuff there on the paving. The risk is acceptable, given that we’re talking about meals.

   Stay the fuck indoors.