DEMENTIA CARE: INACTION STATIONS.

As sure as day follows night, inevitably, after writing that last blog post, I, too, caught the Norovirus. I can confidently say this is something I never had before and something I need never have again. Never ever.
   I was warned there were two main flavours on offer. The one-day hell. Considered exotic. Or the week-long misery. Considered vanilla, by most standards. I boarded the flight to a week of misery. Lucky me.
   There’s no point in aiming the finger of blame at anyone. By week’s end, I realised there were half a dozen suspects. And those suspects couldn’t exactly say where they got it from. How did it start? I went to bed after believing I was deeply affected by a sad story.
   This was untrue. Yes, the story was sad. However, my body was trying to tell me something. The sudden loss of energy at the end of the night was simply a sudden loss of energy at the end of the night. Until it wasn’t. There was my only clue, and I chose to ignore it. For a wee while.
   Then I woke hours later, and felt things moving through my guts. This is not a good indication. I planned ahead by leaving the bed and heading for the bathroom. There, I couldn’t decide which end my food was going to erupt from.
   Here’s the fun part about Norovirus. It doesn’t fucking matter. You’ll be spewing and dumping from both ends in no time. And within a minute, I was on the big white telephone asking for my friend Hughie.
   That didn’t last long. I felt I’d spewed my last. Then I had the briefest of warning signals from the basement. So I dumped the rest of my food from the other end. And I waited. More of the same.
   Now we are done. Okay. I had the Norovirus. This was like nothing I’d experienced before. It’s a feeling of sickness, turned up to 11. And there’s a specific number on the dial for that setting. I waited. Nothing more. I cleaned up.
   Then I set off on my mission. Downstairs there is a spare basin for spewing into. I reached that without incident. Seizing the basin, I walked upstairs. This is the cautious approach. There’s no need to run on the stairs. You might shake something loose.
   Once I am back in bed, the basin is handy. I plan to sleep. Then I don’t plan to wake up. You are kidding me. I have no more left to give. Oh, how wrong you are. I picked up the basin and held it in front of me as a shield while I made my way to the bathroom.
   If I can’t make it in time, I’ll use the basin. That was my plan. This was close. I’m glad I planned that far ahead. But make it…I did. And I go around the familiar territory, talking to my pal Hughie. Not so long a conversation, this time.
   And then, I sat on the throne and awaited the arrival of a royal proclamation. There is SO much more to give, on that front. My stomach was evacuated. There’d be hardly any action on that score over the whole of the next week.
   At the other end of the scale, though, I just couldn’t stop. It’s as though I’d invented an imaginary amount of food to dump across the landscape…and my body invented the tonnage, just to make the numbers add up.
   I retreated to bed after another cleaning session. My best friend was the spare basin. Unused. But ready for battle at a moment’s notice. I slept the sleep of the wary. Once more, unto the breach. You know the drill. Basin. Dash to the bathroom. Hit the light as an afterthought.
   Camp out on the throne. No more sickness. Less and less of the diarrhoea. There’s an old joke about the spelling of that word. It’s easier to remember if you imagine the cries of pain during a bout of it.
   Di.
   Arrh.
   O.
   E.
   A.
   Clean-up. Carry the basin back. Sleep. For good. Wake up in the morning. Feeling shaky. Weak. More of the same. Camp out on the throne. Daily routine is next. And it has to be different, today. And every day. For a week. Possibly more.
   I cleaned thoroughly. Started carer routine. Mask. Gloves. The hand-sanitiser is not going to stop the spread. Soap and hot water. Then soap and hot water all over again. I eyed up the glove supply.
   Enough for a week. Masks. The same. Minimise contact with the cared-for. Norovirus raced through the carer squads like a dose of salts. So I had a choice. The carers prepare the food or I prepare the food.
   If she’s going to catch it, I’d rather she catch it from me. Everything went minimal. There are two dietary supplements and a raft of pills. Certain pills are optional. I opted out. Vital pills only. The dietary supplements can go on holiday for a week. She’ll get by.
   What are we looking at? Milk-based diet. Leave all the bonus stuff out. No mixing. Less chance of contamination. Easier on me, operating in gloves. All I do is pour milk into a cup and seal the lid. We’re good to go.
   Some carers returned to the service after recovering from their bouts with the great torment. They were all gloved and masked. We shared our war stories with the worst details left out. I am wrecked for the duration.
   No energy.
   I rustled up the energy to oversee the care process. And I made a decision. The wee wumman being looked after…she can stay in bed. She isn’t ill. But I want to minimise contact. No going to and fro. Bed to chair, and chair to bed.
   Why not? I’d need to be there, to make adjustments throughout the day. Yes, the carers can do all that. But through the day, when no care team is in, I always have to adjust a few million things. If she stays in the bed, there’s less work involved and less chance of contamination.
   Everything is assessed. Evaluated. We know the risks. Some service users are affected. Family members. More carers come in and tell their stories, which I can’t repeat here. Some of those are beyond belief.
   Let’s just say that you do what you have to do to survive. Whole families are struck down at the same time. That’s when you learn the value of having many towels in the house. The first care team left and I went to bed.
   But first, before rest, the internet. I see a list of incoming parcels. None on day one. This is day one and it’ll be the worst. A very long day. Longer than that. No. Like that, only more so. But longer than that.
   Next. More internet. I ordered fresh supplies of masks, gloves, and paper cups. Then I struggled to bed. What about food? No. Here is the law. Have nothing to eat on the first day. Hell, I don’t even get around to a drink until the evening. Even then, I only took small sips of water to see how I handled the intake.
   Luckily, I kept the water down. I was present for the first care team and the second. Other than that, I stayed camped out in bed with more and more emergency measures available to me. Much of the first full day was in bed or in the bathroom.
   A minute or two at a time, being a carer. Small doses. Action stations? No. Inaction stations. If you can’t do anything, then for fuck’s sake don’t. The night dragged by, unsettled. But I took precautions well ahead of time. If I’d been incapacitated during the day, carers would have used the keysafe to come in.
   My big worry during all this is that the wee wumman catches Norovirus. Then she’ll be emptying everything. And she will dehydrate. So I have a plan for that. Another preparation I made earlier. The alert system. If I am too ill to clean up, I can call the squad and they will clean up. Finally, I realise a damned good use of the new alert system. But I don’t have to resort to that, luckily.
   If she’s ill, I’ll drip-feed her water. It does not come to that. With everyone around her dropping like flies, the wee wumman is fine. I am utterly out of it. Day two is slightly better. I have a fridge full of food that I can’t eat. So I plan meals later in the week.
   The stuff in the fridge will keep. But it is going to bump into the next week’s food delivery. Back to the internet I go. Cut the next week’s shopping. Middle of the day. I risked soup. It’s tomato. If that’s coming back out, it’s liquid. No solids in there. My best bet.
   I kept it down. It has to escape at the other end, and that’s still unpleasant. I have an uneasy sleep during the day, several days in a row. When I wake, it’s to receive a message from my bowels.
   This is endless. Five minutes in bed feels like weeks. Then I realise the time, and I still have the rest of the day to crawl through, one tortoise-paced second at a time.
   Hours drag like years. Then days feel like hell, only a little bit extra. The disease alternates levels of ferociousness. One day, I am recovering. The next, it’s another bout of sheer awfulness. A good day. Then a vile day. I take the week to recover.
   Once I had two good days in a row, I knew I was in the clear. The gloves and mask all stay on. No need to slip up at the last stretch. The wee wumman has a holiday from it all, and spends a week in bed. She swerves the whole thing.
   A week later, and she’s back on the full supplements. We move her to the chair. No one else on the care-team drops out with the virus. There’s no such thing as normal as far as dementia care is concerned. But things return to normal.
   Thanks to Covid, and idiots who hoarded toilet roll, I gradually built up sterling reserves of toilet paper once the initial fuss died down. I guess that’s one thing to bless Covid for. Just that one thing, and not too much. But, yeah. Glad of the stockpile.