Heat came and went. Then heat
returned. I’d arranged a new fan. Big. Powerful. It would help, in the warm
times. But how would it help? It’s been a nuisance to place…in the right place.
The trouble with a damn good fan is that it will cool you down.
Okay for you, for me, true. But for someone
with limited mobility and almost no concentration, the fan becomes a problem.
It’ll make the cared-for too cold. And it’ll dry you out. I can, and do, make
adjustments. Eternal vigilance is the answer.
But there’s a nervous atmosphere to leaving
someone in a room with a fan working away. Let’s talk about the hot and the
cold of it all.
What is it like, in summer, in the house of
an elderly person? From what the carers tell me about the service in general,
really old people feel the cold far more. They reach for the heating in July.
Using winter thermostat settings that haven’t been changed since some other
century, since you were about to ask.
On chilly September days, the carers tell me
this place is quite cold. So it is. No heating. Extra layers instead. Save your
heating money for the winter war. As the weeks grow colder in October, I fire
up the atomic pile and prepare for a potential Ice Age.
I should add that this is
I make sure the heating is very definitely off
during the summer. If the cared-for needs warming up on a chill summer’s day,
there are extra blankets that do the job just fine. This is the rule of chilly
days in late spring, the whole of summer, and early autumn.
No heat required. Just extra layers. Warmer
clothing. More of it. Thicker blankets. More of them.
And the flip-side? No cooling required,
except now and again. The heat problem is unpredictable. As with all other
matters, Scottish miserliness applies here. There is no justification for
adding air-conditioning. On financial grounds, the financial grounds are shaky.
There are drinks for cooling you down on that one roasting day of the year in
Air-conditioning? Our weather isn’t built
for it. And our houses aren’t built for it. Hell, our windows aren’t built to
take it. So we go for the cheaper approach, as our wallets aren’t built for it.
I
choose a fan that stands on a base, and occupies that one part of the room
where no one will trip up over the equipment. Leaving someone alone in a room
with a fan, there are a million considerations. I won’t list them all here.
That would be rude. Here are a few…
Every item of equipment is a tripping
hazard. This includes all items of mobility equipment, as you’ll learn to your
cost about five minutes after adding mobility equipment to your floorspace.
A fan is a tripping hazard. It’s also a tipping hazard. You can’t place the fan
in a zone that trips you up. But then you can’t put it within reach of the
person who is stuck in the chair. What they can’t trip up over…they might still
grab and tip.
Then you’ll have a damaged fan, an increased
tripping hazard to yourself as you walk in the room to find out what made that
noise, a risk of electrical fault and fire, and so on.
Okay. Now the fan is within reach of the
socket. No, no, no, you don’t plug a fan into an extension cord. You are trying
to limit the cabling on the floor.
Where was I? You bought the big fan. It’s in
the room. No one will trip up over it. And no one in a chair will reach out to
grab the unit. Did you find a socket in reach? Yes. Okay. Now you are in
business. Using two sockets.
The primary socket places the fan nearer the
person. And the alternative socket is much further away. Which to use?
Depends on the heat in the room. If the heat
is gradually building, you’ll need to use the alternative socket on the other
side of the room. Keep the fan at a distance. Let it do its work in circulating
the air. Not a big deal. At full blast, it affects the room, but doesn’t turn
the cared-for to ice.
But if the heat is building quickly or turns
very warm after a slow build-up, you are on the primary socket space, with the
fan much closer to the person you are trying to keep cool. Let the air
circulate. Avoid creating a solid fixed cone of air.
If the fan moves from side to side, use that
function: never let the fan dwell on the person being cooled. The machine
should do its job of moving from side to side.
It’s out of the question to point the fan
directly at the cared-for, switch it on, and return after twenty minutes to
find a mummified husk in the chair. Fans dry you out.
With the fan close, the strength of the
machine can be turned down. The air is circulating nearby. You aren’t keeping
ice in its solid form here. Just cooling a person.
Some people find the sound of a fan
soothing. Bless them, the fools. Yes, the fan has variable speed settings. This
means it is quiet, noisy, or loud. For a woman with no real concentration, the
fan isn’t interrupting anything else. Sad, but true.
What about falling asleep? If she falls
asleep in the chair, she falls asleep. No, no, no, the fan isn’t left on
overnight to cover the bed. The only cooling machine that stays on overnight is
the fridge-freezer.
Even
in the depths of winter, there’s nothing heating the house all night long
through to the morning. Why the hell would you cool even a single room with a
fan from dusk until dawn?
Items stay powered overnight. Electricity is
available. It powers the community alert box, the inflatable ripple mattress,
the fridges and their connected freezers, the fire alarms, a gas and
electricity monitor. That monitor powers down to some minimalist mode after a
while…
During winter, the heating is done for the
night and there’s a retreat to warm blankets. There’d have to be mammoths
roaming the streets to force the heating on all night long in winter.
In summer, the sting of heat in the day
fades as the sky very slowly darkens…and the fan stops. Consider everything
when buying anything as a carer.
I’ve considered where the fan sits and when.
And I decide when to use it and for how long. I check in, periodically, to make
sure all is well. If I need to check more carefully, I fire off the temperature
gun and take a few readings on behalf of the cared-for…and for myself by way of
comparison.
Always revisit tripping hazards. Check
active machines. Hell, check the ones you switched off. Double-check the ones
you just bought. And triple-check the ones you bought a while back, to see if
they are still useful.
I have a harsh rule. If a cable is worn or
frayed, it is done. Apply this rule, and you’ll live longer. There are no
electrical cables leading into the bathroom. Something else that’ll help you
live longer.
But then, this is
I took a break before
finishing this blog post. Just wanted to see how the weather panned out. There
were warm days that built heat gradually in the main room. The fan was off at
first. Then, after firing off the temperature gun, I switched the fan on at the
alternative socket, with the fan moving side to side.
Easy circulation of air, from across the
room. Blasting away. Another check-in, and another shooting with the
temperature gun. All is well. This is working. Just go with that, for now.
The day passes. Heat builds. Time to move
the fan closer, using the primary socket. The air is still moving side to side.
Aiming for the target. And the target is not the person. The person is off to
the side.
I’d cut the strength of the blast. Periodic
check-up. Temperature gun. Shoot myself as well. We’re all good. I leave her to
it. There are, after all, many other aspects of caring. And they go on in other
rooms. Laundry is laundering. Pills arrive and I must sort them carefully.
The cooling machine has a whole system of
its own, set up by me. And it is on. Working away.
Except…not today. A bump in the weather
rolled in from the ocean, and we’re into one of those chill, wet, blustery,
autumn days that will happen at any old time in June, July, and August. Rehearsals
for September and October.
Today, writing about keeping someone cool,
I’ve arranged warmer clothes and thicker blankets. Well, there’s the Scottish
summer for you.
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