DEMENTIA CARE: DOING MAINTENANCE TO GET MORE MAINTENACE DONE.

 

In the bathroom there’s an extractor fan. It stopped working. I put in a request for maintenance. This fan was fixed once before, over its long life. Never been replaced. These days, a long life for an electrical gadget is anything over ten years in operation.
   Long enough for the fan to become extinct. The electrician explained that they don’t support those fans any longer. There are now better fans available. He’d have to order a whole fan, disconnect the old power arrangement, and hook up new wiring to the power.
   In the loft.
   He’d need loft access.
   Oh.
   Now the loft is a place I store things in. For a time. Items go out of the way until I can arrange for removal. Maybe I’ll bring an item back down from the loft and use it. Or I will transfer storage from the loft to the garden hut. Beyond those options, I can send a thing to charity or to one of several bins.
   In the past few days I’ve put stuff back in action, recycled paper, shredded paper, sent stuff to metal and glass recycling, and put things in the final bin. The one that doesn’t recycle anything. Why? I must arrange loft access for the electrician.
   At one time, there was no great loft access to the place he wanted to go to. A section of the loft just above the bathroom. When the water heating system was upgraded, there was no more need for the ancient plastic water tank perched on a wooden frame inside the loft, just off-centre, past the hatch.
   What did that mean? It meant removal of the water tank. The framework is still partly in place. Pipes that used to work around the water tank were capped off if no longer needed. One pipe snaked up the side of the wooden frame and slithered back down again.
   This is why I’ve preserved the remnants of the wooden frame. If I am working in the loft and trip at that point, the wooden frame stops an accident from turning into a disaster. It shields the snaky pipe. With the water tank a mere memory, that opened up the loft. Until that revamp, you could only access the other side. And the other side was where everything was stored.
   I now have both sides available. Which means…I’ve blocked off easy access to the space over the bathroom by storing things there. So my maintenance task was to clear up the main loft area, pack things more neatly, more efficiently, and then transfer all the other stored items to that side.
   Then, with everything stored in the old area where everything used to be stored anyway, the electrician will have a clear run to the cable that comes up from the bathroom fan he’ll install. He’ll sort out the power flow. That reminds me. I must empty the cupboard downstairs, so he can have access to the fusebox.
   There’s been more to it than that. I’ve always kept this narrow alley available through the last of the wooden frame. But that’s not good enough for the electrician. I decided I’d knock the framework back down to the minimum required to protect the snaky pipe, and I’d make the improvised flooring more secure while I went about this.
   Granted, clearing a path for the electrician is the same as clearing a path for myself. So everyone benefits from the idea. With all the stuff in the loft stored to one side, I’ll move the lights around. I keep lights on hooks, leading back to an extension hub. Replaced the old hub with a newer one, for practical reasons. So making a few temporary changes won’t be a problem.
   I’ve been given the date of execution of the repair. And I am rationing out the work on a daily basis, waiting until early evening so the carers are out of the way and there aren’t any more deliveries, calls from clinics, or visits by other healthcare professionals.
   Clearing or rearranging a loft is best done all at once or in stages. I’d do this all at once…but I am a carer. And you have to break almost everything into manageable pieces. The loft is one of the most dangerous areas in a house. Basically, inside the hatch, you face all the fun of another dangerous place – the top of the stairs – without the stairs.
   Instead there’s a ladder. So any fall is direct.
   I’ve rarely tumbled down stairs. Usually, I fall and slide down a few steps, coming to a halt. Even a full slide down the length of the stairs would be annoying. But the danger of tumbling the length of the stairs is present. Never mind all the times I was fine. It’s the one time that fucks you up that really fucks you up.
   Realistically, I don’t think there’s anything worth grabbing if I slip and fall out of the hatch. I’d bounce off the ladder, using my feet as awkward shock-absorbers. Any attempt to grab the ladder would result, clearly, in shredding my skin on the aluminium. All those awkward angles and ladder fixtures. Just waiting to rip me silly.
   Potentially, the stairs are almost the worst problem. And the loft. I still rate the kitchen the most dangerous part of the house. That’s where the gas cooker is. A recent visit by an engineer took us into talk of the last upgrade to the gas supply, and the real reason for the changes. Modernisation. That wasn’t it. Modernisation was an excuse for quickly fixing a flaw perceived in the old design.
   I remember how it was all arranged, and what the engineer said to me matched up to what was done. He just explained the dangerous part out loud. It was played out as modernisation so as not to scare anyone. They didn’t want to cause a panic.
   That means. What does that mean? It means the gas engineers didn’t want everyone jumping to the head of the queue to have their gas fixed ahead of everyone else jumping to the head of the queue. Instead, it was a case of waiting your turn and hoping your house didn’t blow up in the meantime.
   We were all fine. This new piece of maintenance should be easy for the electrician. I’ll remove a mirror from the bathroom so it doesn’t get in the way of progress. By the time he arrives, the loft will be ready for him. The only dangers are…tripping and falling out of the hatch…tripping and falling through into a room below, and tripping and falling catastrophically, either rupturing a water pipe or piercing a live electrical cable.
   I’ve never fallen from the hatch, crashed into a room, ruptured a pipe or pierced a cable. And I’m not in the mood to do any of those things now, or make things easier for the electrician to do those things now. Little mess and no fuss. No mess, preferably.
   The most important thing is to remember to have the ladder and hatch ready, and switch on the lights up in the loft. I handle that from down here. Being a carer, I’m always looking at that loft and ways to make it safer. There’s one awkward area of the roof with a bathroom sponge fixed to it, so I won’t bump my head if I forget to duck.
   That loft is at its safest, now. Cluttered. This is the nature of using it for temporary storage. Items keep moving around. The improvised floorspace is its own massive loft shelf. If I pack everything away efficiently, I’ll have no trouble on this job. It’ll be harder to remove things.
   I’ll just have to go with the time-tested rule. Oh for a life, for a life, oh.
   LI-FO. That’s LAST IN – FIRST OUT. Going by this saying…yes…sometimes it is better to work in small stages, when up in the loft. There’s a fair bit of rearranging before you move anything down to the floor below. Often, it is best to start out in the garden, at the hut, when planning loft improvements.
   I’ve moved stuff. Hammered nails in. Hauled nails out. Reached for the saw. I keep a saw in the loft, along with other tools, to save traipsing back and forth. For safety, I have one eye on the other eye keeping an eye on things. There’s a phone at my hip if I must call for help. First Aid is nearby.
   And I have a clearer path to the ladder, from downstairs. Another mini-adventure. I resisted putting a bookcase next to the area under the hatch. But I calculated that a slim bookcase wouldn’t stand in the way of the ladder. A tall bookcase. And easy for me to navigate my way by, thanks to familiarity.
   But the electrician isn’t familiar with the set-up. So I performed an obvious calculation. I could swap the tall thin bookcase for a short thin bookcase. After finding space to pile books when I offloaded them, I made the switchover. Much safer for me, in hindsight. Hindsight is what I have to use when climbing down the ladder. It’s just how the space is arranged.