I Couldn't Care Less: Lest We Forget

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A hypodermic needle and a vial

Lest We Forget

This time last week1 when I should have been writing my ICCL piece, I was in fact being shouted at and verbally abused. Which made my submission a trifle tardy. Dmitri, ever accommodating, assuaged my guilt somewhat by losing my copy, so I had to resubmit it anyway. What a trooper.


Meanwhile I was still being shouted at. I mean, I am married, so it goes with the job a bit, but on this occasion it wasn’t my wife. At least, not entirely. She, tired, pain-wracked and doubtless nervous at the beast we were due to face, was in a very bad mood when I left in the morning. We parted company so that I could make a collection and she could head off to our rendezvous point by way of picking up some supplies. We would need them. We were about to lock horns with Senile Dementia.


I’ve alluded to my deep respect for carers of the senile in the past. Senile conjures up daft old man amusingly mistaking the fridge for the toilet in the middle of the light. But even that, humorous anecdote though it may be in retrospect, must be a nightmare in the immediate aftermath. For a start you have to clean up the urine, then you have to throw away all the food you kept chilled, then you have to DEEP clean your fridge, all this while babysitting for someone who used to be your spouse. And that’s by no means the worst of it. I don’t know about the worst of it, so I’ll tell you what I do know instead.


Our friend had wound up in a care home for people with senility problems after a serious diabetic attack and other nasty issues. During his stay in hospital he thanked me for visiting him with our rabbits (which I didn’t- to be fair, my wife and I had the police out looking for him, so it’s not as if we didn’t care) and also phoned to tell me that he was sitting watching the hospital staff steal all the lead off the roof during which time he was advising them that they were stealing the wrong stuff because lead isn’t very valuable. Since entering the care home his observations have included a foot long purple rat who lives under his chest of drawers. We told him the rat was probably male from his description (purple rat? Oh that’s male colouring) because he was worried about baby rats. He likes the rat though, and it was nice company for him. He loved our pet rat Chloe when she was alive.


So we knew his grip on reality was slim. We knew, too, that he had moments of surprising clarity, often relating to events 40 years old. We further knew that he was bad tempered old bugger, although since he was in the home he seemed to have mellowed. We suspected that a clean environment and proper care meant that he was healthier and happier, despite his periodic complaints that they wouldn’t let him have decent biscuits. Today we were taking him out of the care home for a few hours (all my wife had to spare- and there was no way I was doing this on my own) so that he could return to his old flat to remove some of his possessions before it was sold. A further complication was that the flat is the result of a receivership struggle because of the old boy’s debts, and his solicitor has been forced (as far as we understand it) to claim power of attorney because of his client’s diminished mental capacity. To the mind of an independently inclined, confused and belligerent and confused old man, this is base treachery, so he was not happy.


Anyway, to cut a long story short, we got the old man to his flat and he spent the entire time furious. He would not allow us to throw away so much as an envelope without demonstrating that it was empty, raged abusively and swore incessantly. It is worth pointing out that his flat had been broken into and much of value had been taken or damaged. It is also worth pointing out that the flat was, without a word of exaggeration, vermin invested, while he still lived there. He mainly wanted to take bags of toilet rolls, shopping bags, envelopes and a few things of genuine personal value like old postcards and phone numbers. He left various valuable antique (or at least old) items of furniture and a fortune in DVDs, insisting he would be back.


I could find no positive spin to put on the day. His visit had been a source of great unhappiness for him and a trial by belligerence for my wife and me. To add insult to injury we had recovered almost nothing worth the effort. It was a largely wasted and thoroughly miserable morning. So what of the poor people for whom this is a daily business? Every day overwhelmingly dominated by persuading the person in your charge to act in accordance with reality. They don’t have a million pounds under their bed to pay off the bill they got this morning. Their brother (who is dead) won’t be coming to visit them later on. They didn’t take their medicine earlier, and you know this because it’s still in their pill dispenser. Shrugging off the denials, the confusion and the anger, you wade through this to try to do your best. Well I salute you, marvellous people. I hope life gives you moments of relaxation, hope and possibly even connection with the person you care for which, make it seems at least a bit worthwhile. Also, if you like, please drop in and say hello at Carers of H2G2.

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