Yesterday was my shopping day and we almost overslept this morning - I suspect that the dark mornings makes it slightly more difficult to awake at our normal time. But the two carers came on time to get Meg up and ready but she did appear to be a little sleepy this morning. Perhaps the RSV virus jab that we had the other day is making us both a little more tired but at least we are happy to be within the narrow window of the system (75-79 year olds) and to have been given a level of protection that may last for at least a couple of years. One of the carers was detailed to stay on with Meg as a 'sit' carer whilst I went off to do our weekly shopping. This particular carer has a very happy and friendly disposition and I was actually quite relieved to leave Meg with her whilst the shopping was done. At Aldi, I saw a pair of admittedly thin cotton men's pyjamas marked down to £5.00 so I bought this to complement a similar pair I bought last week thinking to myself that in the very cold weather, two pairs of thin pyjamas might actually prove warmer than the traditional Winceyette, particularly if they trap a layer of air between the two pairs. Upon my return, the carer helps me to put things away and this seems to take most of the morning. At midday, the manager of the care agency who details himself as one of the duty rota was due to call around accompanied by his manager. The idea of this is that the management team as a whole have sight of each of their clients periodically so that they can get a more rounded picture of their domestic situation and attendant care needs. This sounds like excellent practice and I took the opportunity to enquire how our application to Social Services for an extra visit was being processed. I was told the most incredible tale of woe about how things were with Social Services these days. Every request for an extra resource has to go through several layers of bureaucracy and then sent out to an assessment panel to see if the extra resource can be approved or not. So a decision can take months to emerge and the whole scenario is a response to the absence of resource within social service departments. The levels of bureaucracy are an attempt to save money be delaying and delaying the decision making process. As though all of this was not bad enough, I was told blood curdling tales of what was happening in Birmingham Social Services now that the city council is effectively bankrupt. Birmingham's problems were brought to a head when it was ruled that they had underpaid their female employees for decades and were then faced with a huge bill in back payments. At the same time, there was a huge squeeze in local authority budgets which in the big cities were generally under the control of a Labour administration. This suited the purposes of the then Tory government who starved the big cities of resources and then found it quite easy to deflect any criticism by pointing out that Labour administrations were always profligate whereas their Tory counterparts in the more affluent shires did not have the same scale of problems exhibited in the large conurbations. We received through the post a written confirmation of the fact that the wheelchair service are due to pay us a visit in about 10 days time to see if the ankle straps arrangements that I utilise to keep Meg's legs from slipping off the footrests can be replaced by a more professional arrangement. The occupational therapists were generally happy with my pragmatic solution but they have made an onward reference to the wheelchair service itself that may have some more professional kit to help to keep Meg more secure (and less liable to slippage) in her wheelchair.
Last night, I had a sudden burst of enthusiasm and wondered whether a keyboard that I had purchased some time ago to make a Bluetooth connection with my iPad would actually work with my existing iPhone. After a certain amount of experimentation, I found that this would work pretty all so in the afternoon, I wondered if it possible to view the TV whilst also using the keyboard to write some text for this blog. As we been watching a Lucy Worsley program on Mozart in London yesterday, I had unfortunately had a doze in the middle of it and the carers had also come along before we had got to the end of it. So today, we are resuming our viewing of this and I am also trying out this innovative bit of kit and am using the ‘Pages’ app on the iPhone. From here, it is a fairly simple task to use a few keystrokes to upload the text into an email and then I can send it to myself so that I can read it on either of my laptops. This afternoon, it has been rather a gloomy afternoon so we are not unhappy to have another little burst of Mozart for this afternoon. We had been watching some ‘BlackAdder’ on BBC catchup but the selections were not some of the rib tickling ones so we were happy to resume our viewings of yesterday.
In the late afternoons, Meg and I have a little routine that seems to work pretty well for us. After the carers have made Meg comfortable, we stay in our main lounge where we have a chair in which the seat cushion has been tilted back somewhat to help keep Meg from sliding off and whilst Meg is sitting happily in her chair, I go off and make ourselves some tea and also treat ourselves to a little bit of chocolate. Then we either watch some comedy or view a YouTube concert until it is time for the 6.00pm news. I have also got into the habit of giving Meg her ‘evening’ pills at 6.00pm before Meg is put to bed at about 7.00pm. For the last day or so, this timing has worked out very well for us and it seems to help Meg settle down for the evening a bit more readily. This then releases me to get some more of my evening routine jobs done which is always a bonus.
© Mike Hart [2024]