DEMENTIA CARE: THE WEIGHT OF BEING A CARER.

What is the weight of being a carer? In kilos, it’s about 7.1. And I had to go on a bit of a quest around the place to find scales large enough for the bag of pills that thumped into the back hall yesterday. There are Post Office scales here on a shelf above me. Too dainty.
   There’s a set of cookery scales down in the kitchen. Too narrow. And also too dainty. Somewhere, somewhere else, I knew there’d be human scales. I guess you could measure a piglet or small dog on them, too, if you had to. Anyway, I moved them out of sight and out of mind, these mythical scales.
   That was for reasons. Don’t ask me what. If I think hard about it, there was some bathroom maintenance so the scales had to come out of there. And they never went back. Now I had to find them. All the other scales were inappropriate.
   When I found them, I found two batteries next to the scales. The scales take three batteries. So I knew a battery was there, hidden. Luckily, carers have X-Ray Vision. I moved some shit around and saw the third battery.
   I had to make decisions. Would I measure the package in kilos, stones, pounds, shillings, groats, or cubits? I settled on kilos. The package was so effing huge, in a massive bright red bag, that I just had to weigh the bloody thing.
   Why was it so large? Sometimes the medicine arrives in multiple bags. Rarely, it’s in one. And this time around it was time to order almost all the things. Diet is important. Controlling that diet is incredibly important if the person concerned just doesn’t like the taste of anything except strawberry milk.
   You can’t just have strawberry milk, though. No. You need supplements for this and supplements for that. Boxes of sachets of powder for milkshakes. And bottles of build-up drinks to keep you going. Almost everything is neutral in flavour.
   Neutral. Try drinking the stuff.
   The main drink is strawberry milk, ripped from the shelves of the supermarket. Those milk bottles go in the reserve fridge. In case the main fridge breaks down. So that’s the milk reserve in the reserve fridge. It travels from the reserve fridge to the main fridge and is served daily.
   When the shopping is delivered, new milk goes to the reserve, and reserve milk transfers over. I can’t afford to lose a fridge. And we can’t afford to go without milk if the shelves are empty. When the kitchen was rebuilt, the electrician added an extra socket for the spare fridge, seeing as I was a carer.
   Okay. That’s basic strawberry milk taken care of. Strawberry milkshake sachets are delivered by the pharmacy. Except when there aren’t any. Then the pharmacy phones up and offers neutral sachets. Sometimes there’s a mix of the two. Doesn’t matter. The sachet, of any kind, goes into the strawberry milk anyway.
   This is the case with the build-up drink. A small neutral bottle of the stuff sloshed into the cup and I add strawberry milk to give it a bit of flavour. With all the fridges and extra bottles of milk, it’s been a long time since we were caught short.
   No strawberry milk one day from the supermarket. At least, not the full load. Two bottles. An offer of the rest of the bottles as chocolate milk. No good. Rejected those. Took the shopping in. Went to the nearest shops, minimised my risk of Covid by getting in and out at a quiet time. Found enough milk, plain and strawberry, to last the rest of the week. Saved a trip to town with greater Covid risks.
   Yesterday’s delivery of pills was small. But the delivery included all the mini-bottles of milk and a world’s supply of sachets for milkshakes. A few other bits and pieces bulked out the order. I just had to weigh the pile. And the pile weighed in at 7.1 kilos. Or just over fifteen pounds. Which just exceeds one stone in weight.
   If you want that in Scottish measurements, you’d translate to seevin pint wan kilos, fifteen pun, and a stane. Depending on which part of the country you are in, though you have to take wind direction into consideration.
   Carting that through icy winter streets from the pharmacy to the house…would be annoying. But I’d wrap up warm if I had to use the ancient method of actually walking there to collect pills.
   The weight of being a carer is 7.1 kilos. I’m surprised the prescriptions were delivered so rapidly after being ordered. Arranging for winter prescriptions means a delay. If the sachets aren’t available, the pills come along first. Last time, the sachets were delayed so much that I had a surplus when these ones came.
   I try, as much as possible, to plan ahead and to have spares in place. It’s like juggling fire when making plans for pills. Not billy clubs on fire, or juggling balls on fire. Just fire.
   What other weights do I deal with? The crates of shopping. Those were arranged for delivery long ago. A year into being an unofficial carer, and a year away from being an official one. At that time, I took on more and more responsibility. But you don’t feel the weight, when you add a little more weight each day.
   Until, one day, you need help. After a year of caring, it became clear that shopping took too long. Sometimes, if you want help, you have to help yourself. I made the decision to have shopping delivered so that I could arrange time better around the house.
   Grocery shopping would take at least an hour. Sometimes longer, as I’d combine shopping with other business in town. Weather added time to that. But I’d often do two shopping runs a week. So double the amount of time spent.
   Now the whole process takes about ten minutes at its most complex, depending on what I’ve ordered, how much, and where I have to stash it all. You don’t know the weight until the weight is lifted. And then the weight piles on again. At the start, there were no dietary requirements. Prescriptions were ordered in town. You’d drop by in a few days and pick up the paperwork and head to the pharmacy.
   Maybe that pharmacy had to direct you to another nearby pharmacy. Didn’t matter. That was on the way to the shops. Two visits to town meant splitting the shopping in half. Carrying lower burdens home twice a week, for the exercise. Being aware not to strain too much, as you had other responsibilities. Anyway, there was always the slow bus in heavy weather.
   This routine eased off with the supermarket deliveries, but it would have shut down anyway thanks to Covid. Gradually, people started to come to the house. I was given a day’s warning about the arrival of the official care team. Sometimes you are well-informed.
   Looking back, all sorts of departments were represented. Some of those put in phone appearances after Covid and never quite recovered enough to go face-to-face again. I’ve had so many people through the doors of this improvised care home.
   Carers. Nurses. Doctors. Dieticians. Physiotherapists. Occupational therapists. Social workers. Woodworkers. Trainees in various disciplines, tagging along. Legal representation – solicitor. Paramedics. Electrical engineers. Maintenance people who were there to check on carer equipment, powered and non-powered.
   Those and others. Adding to support. Bearing a little more of the weight. When I picked up pills before the dietary stuff was added, I put those pills in my pocket and couldn’t feel the added weight. At that time, I’d talk to a particular pharmacist who remembered the delightful wee wumman who used to come in for her own medicine.
   Then it was out of there, and off through town playing a guessing-game about how bad the weather would be by the time I reached the decision-point. Turn here and grab a bus. Or turn here and run for the bus. But maybe I’d turn there and walk – particularly if I’d just missed a bus and the weather was okay.
   I walked home for exercise, and to think over the business of being a carer. Sometimes the route I took carried me in the direction of relatives who would get the latest updates from me. Here and there, I just liked walking in the rain. Wrapped up well against it.
   You end up on a priority list if something happens to the electricity. Or a department phones and asks how everything is going. Yes, I speak on her behalf. The weight of being a carer was once weightless when I picked up pills. Now supplements are delivered, the weight is 7.1.
   I can’t be arsed lugging that from the pharmacy to home, whether I am in the mood for walking in rain or not. Other things weigh me down. And I keep shifting stuff around so that I can gain more help if I need it. Later, help arrives in the form of coffee and a chocolate muffin. I’ll be helping myself to that treat.