Still in RVI
but there is light …
If Ferretfingers
wasn’t autistic and didn’t need so much help moving we might have been home a
week ago, but there it is.
I’ve managed
to get home every other day or so for a bath or shower, walk to the end of the
garden and a bit of shifting stuff in the hope we’ll be home soon.
It’s been a
pretty awful couple of weeks. Thank
goodness for mobile phones and texts.
I’d have felt completely alone and isolated without them.
SILVER LINING
At the start
of all this I weighed 14st 4lb.
Yesterday afternoon I weighed 13st 13¼lb. We’ve broken the 14st barrier. Two years ago I was over 15stone.
Having
witnessed, and eaten, hospital meals Fester now knows what a reasonable portion
is for an adult. Hopefully he will stop
feeding the boys, and us, quite so much.
I live in hope.
I’ve learnt
how lovely Thunderthighs is, and he knows a little of how much he means to me.
Thunderthighs
has stepped up and grown up a little.
LITTLE BLACK
CLOUDS - 16.00 19.02.20
All is
organised.
Equipment in
the house.
The OT has
done the safety assessment and brought the wheelchair to the hospital.
The home-going
ambulance/patient transport is booked.
Then …
A couple turn
up from our local authority “Enablement Team”.
I naively
think it’s to organise someone to wash him.
Oh No
“We’re here to
see about his re-enablement needs.”
I answer their
questions about his daily routine: tell them how he needs prompting to clean
his teeth and wash; tell them how he washes himself in his evening bath; tell
them he can’t get upstairs to the bathroom because his broken ankle in
non-weight-bearing and besides which he can’t get in the bath with a plaster
cast on his broken ankle.
“Oh. It doesn’t look as if, from what you say,
that he needs our re-enablement services.”
“So can you
say whether or not he can go home?”
“Oh it’s not for
us to say, we can only report to the Social Worker.”
“Have you any
authority over whether he goes home tomorrow.”
“Oh it’s not for
us to say, we can only report to the Social Worker.”
“Because he is, we are, going home tomorrow
whatever any one from Adult Social Care says.”
“Oh it’s not
for us to say, we can only report to the Social Worker …”
They leave.
Before ringing
to blast Ferretfingers’ ‘Enablement Officer’ (i.e. cheaper than a social
worker) I go to see Ward Sister.
“Have those people
got any power to stop David going home tomorrow?”
“No they have
not. I have no idea why they were
sent. All I asked for was for someone to
come in and wash him. Anyway, I’m doing
all his medications now. How do you feel
about giving him his heparin anti-coagulant injections?”
“Good God no! I couldn’t do that to him. I can barely watch!”
“That’s ok; I’ll
ring your GP surgery and get a District Nurse to do it.”
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