DEMENTIA CARE: MASKS AND GLOVES.

What happens when you are looking after someone and that person becomes ill? Try this one on for size. What happens when you are looking after someone and you become ill? Nearly there. What happens when the care team becomes ill? We’re trying to avoid everyone getting ill. What happens when that happens?
   Masks and gloves for the care team members who are still going. Super-careful care.
   Someone grew ill. Don’t know who. Maybe a family member out in the world. Visited someone being looked after. No way to tell. This is not a blame game. As for the disease itself?
   We’ll call this disease the NOROVIRUS. Yes, it is the Winter Vomiting Bug. (Though that’s only the half of it.) But you can catch it in the Spring or at any other time. It isn’t a notifiable disease. You don’t have to tell the government. But…in a care team, you are going to have to spread precautions faster than the disease can travel.
   Tricky. One fine day, we’re on regular precautions. Gloves are standard. Masks are optional, depending on how immuno-compromised the cared-for person is. From morning shift to night shift, everyone switched to masks as well as gloves. So this wasn’t one day to the next, but a same-day thing.
   I’ve never had the dreaded virus myself, but everyone who talks about it says they’d rather gargle broken glass and spit their teeth into the wind. How is the care team holding up? Out of eight daily carers, four are not on shift. I know nothing of people who are off work. Of the four carers coming in, one is away on holiday. She dodged a bullet there, I guess.
   One carer is on sick-leave for other reasons. We think we lost one to the virus, but that could be something else entirely. And the fourth regular is soldiering on. When I say we lost a carer, she’s still alive. Just making that clear. This is not Ebola.
   Alive, and feeling wretched for a few days. Carers…care. Clue is in the title. A carer doesn’t like to be off shift from illness. And a carer really hates to be ill when off shift, too. They love their jobs and they enjoy their breaks.
   Illness is a great disruptor. Greater in this area of life, as there are plenty of immuno-compromised or immuno-suppressed people being looked after. You don’t want to pick something up in one house and spread it to the whole team.
   You also don’t want to spread it to more and more people you are looking after. The potential ripple is as bad as a giant wave. Clients, service users, the elderly…can’t be affected. Infected. And you don’t want to knock out their relatives, either.
   There are two types of carers, here. When I speak of carers, I am talking about the local authority care team. An army of women, mobilised to perform random jobs in each house visited.
   Random? In some places, carers administer pills. There are varying degrees of mobility to deal with. Every floor or ceiling hoist can be different. That goes for every sling attached to the hoist. And for whatever chair the cared-for is lowered into.
   Carers might handle all the meals. Dietary needs. Arranging the TV. Playing music from their own phones when they are in, to tailor the care experience to the cared-for’s musical taste. It’s all random, in every single house. Even the houses with the same basic building layout. They don’t need illness on top of the mountain they climb on the daily grind.
   The other type of carer? Oh, that’s me. I do the tidying once the carers are gone. Saves them time. They can catch their breaks a little more easily. A family carer. Though people don’t need to be family to be carers. In some cases, you’d recommend against. But enough about those people.
   I was an unpaid carer and then made it official. So the government has its standard bargain in me for doing what I do. It also happens to be doing the right thing, which is fine by me.
   How many people in the chain could be taken out by illness? Local authority care teams. All the way through. And then the service users like me, like my mother. Then other family members or friends or healthcare professionals on visits. People just walking by too close.
   Everyone. For a few days at a time, in staggered shifts where we’d all stagger around from room to room. It’s only a few days of caring. Some people, infirm, would be affected for longer than a few days. Gloves are a daily precaution anyway. But suddenly, the dreaded masks were back. Carers in glasses, steaming up. I was extra careful taking in the shopping and talking to the postie.
   For people who would be contacting me later in the week online in meetings, I had to do a quick non-update. To use my mother’s phrasing, there’s a bug gawin’ aboot. It’s that bug. Aye. The bug. It’s aboot. Mebbe it was that bug.
   I always thought a giant Egyptian beetle was going around, fucking shit up. Knocking over bins. Destroying car mirrors. Puncturing tyres. That sort of thing. Some mutant scarab, perpetuating an Egyptian curse on hyper-English archaeological plunderers. Take that, Peter Cushing! So, yes, I did a non-update. Basically, I am fine and I am still fine the next day. Nothing to report.
   Just in case. That was in advance of suddenly coming down with an awful case of I don’t feel well. Camping out by the porcelain telephone, waiting to make a call. Too feeble to turn the computer on, let alone concentrate enough to transmit messages. Get your non-update in early.
   But I am fine and dandy, today. Tomorrow I hope to be just as fine and dandy. There’s an imbalance. Just one of me. The care team can be replaced by another team far away. Today, for example, I had the last known regular on this squad and a stranger, behind a mask, from far away. Never been here before. Doesn’t know the run.
   That’s what I am here for. To explain the routine to strangers if two strangers come in at once, after only recently meeting each other on a rainy street corner. Every care room is different. There should be a sense of immediacy. You look around and you see spare towels or handy cleaning materials. The talcum powder for sensitive skin. A basin with two sponges for washing. The sponges are not identical.
   Is there a TV on or off? Maybe there’s no TV at all. Are the lights on when you walk in? How is the heating or the cooling? Initial impressions guide you. But there are other things that may need a bit of explanation.
   And if I am going to be camped out next to the porcelain telephone, then there’s no one to explain. Not easily. But I’ve always been here to explain. Lucky that way. I’m here to say to strange replacement carers…this ceiling hoist charges at the end. Just look for a wee green light when you are done, and it’ll be okay for the night squad.
   I double-check when the team leaves, of course. Some hoists charge anywhere on the rail. If you are only used to the one thing, you might encounter the other thing that strongly resembles the one thing. Again, I double-check anyway.
   Been through so many incidents with the hoist that I now know the secret factory reset routine that worked wonders that one time. When you build up experience dealing with one small crisis after another, averting a larger crisis down the line, you wonder how people will get by without you.
   Easy. They will get by. Maybe the next squad has to contend with a lack of charge in the hoist. If I am knocked out by this virus…doesn’t mean my mother will be. So I’ll pass caring duties to the regular care teams.
   Barring that, I can use the emergency alert. If I can reach it. It has to sit up off the floor to achieve its signal. I’d crawl up the wall like Spider-Man to get that job done. No need to unlock the door. The teams can reach me through the keysafe.
   I expect this run of illness to burn out quite soon. Masks and gloves and no sneezing in the building. I feel ill right now – but that’s from the monumental amount of food I just ate. The supermarket delivery included a replacement meal service…
   We don’t have this thing. So we’ve sent you that thing, instead. The other thing is more food for the same money. Enjoy. I’ve stocked up. Overstocked. I’ve overstocked on energy reserves and feel fortified. And now, like a fortress, I will just sit here.
   If the disease got to me, I’d be sitting next to the porcelain telephone. Also, not going anywhere. But for vastly different reasons.