“The Cat has left the Building”
It sounds
like a code message between Cold War spies, but I was finally able to text this
to Nick’s landlord last night after Simon managed to bundle the poor creature
into her basket and whisk her off to be reunited with Nick in their new home.
It
took the best part of three days to catch her, and only then because the
landlord was anxious to start stripping out the leaking bathroom before the
cellar below got completely flooded. It has been like this for weeks but the
landlord kindly said he would wait until Nick moved out to start bottoming the
whole thing. He has been saintly, considering that this is the third time he’s
had to remove the bathroom fixtures to repair broken pipes, and the floor is
completely sodden. The poor cat was hiding in the furthest possible corner
beneath the bath, crouching on the sodden joists and too frightened to come to
our encouraging coos and chicken legs, followed by the terror of men in big
boots starting work in there, so it must have been a relief to be captured at
last.
And the expression on my brother’s face to see her safely back, and the
purring she made on arrival at last, made the whole thing worthwhile. So
all three of them are together in their new home and seem happy to be there.
Behind
the scenes it’s a slightly different matter. I remember what a shock I got the
first time round when Nick moved here in May, when all the arrangements I had
so carefully been setting up for weeks just dropped into a vortex where papers
had been lost, information not passed on and all support simply stopped.
I
don’t think it’s quite as bad as that now, but there’s an echo.
So this
week I have become the Butt-Kicking Battleaxe as one thing after another goes
not according to plan.
Housing
benefit application lost in translation, can I provide the documentation again. I will need to bring I.D and all the original documents into the council offices for approval. We'd been told a month ago that it was all being processed, but apparently
someone had made a mistake and this is not the case.
The
key-safe I requested two weeks ago. Written application handed directly to the
new housing officer for Nick's area, “mislaid”. Whoops. Thankfully the social worker has pulled out
a few stops and organised a temporary one so that the carers don’t have to wake
Nick up and get him stumbling to the door to let them in for his morning call.
The
new carers from Care4S (another pseudonym,
natch) have
yet to prove themselves but don’t impress so far by twice not turning up til
11am to help Nick dress and administer his morning meds, then returning just an hour later to do his lunchtime call.
One of them has such a
phobia of cats that she hardly dares walk through the door in case she sees one
of them (and there was only one of them until last night!) and won’t go in the
bedroom because what if a cat leaps out from under the bed. She’s supposed to
be helping him dress, wash and undress every day this week. In his bedroom. I
feel sorry for her but my brother’s needs have to come first.
It’s clearly not
going to work out so I ring the company to voice my concerns.
“He could put the cats in another room when
carers arrive” is their advice. No. I don’t think so.
He
is severely impaired and cannot do anything of the kind, hence needing care in
the first place. And besides, it’s
a one bedroom flat!
It
is inappropriate for this carer to be coming here in these circumstances and I
will leave it to you to make a different arrangement, I say, repeating myself
slowly and firmly in the old broken record stylee.
Broken
record doesn’t work with the TV installation company who fail to turn up for
the third day running. Aside from wasting hours waiting for them, only to be
told at the eleventh hour that they can’t make it today, Nick is terribly
disappointed. Like so many housebound people, he relies on the TV as a
companion and friend and was really looking forward to one of his special
programmes tonight. I am incensed on his behalf and ring the call centre to
complain. I had already negotiated a discount to make up for their first two
no-shows, by now I think they owe me compensation for lost time as well as an
apology. Fat chance. The call centre girl couldn’t care less. I ask to speak to
a supervisor. Sorry, the supervisors have left for the night. Well of course
they have! I let off steam with a blistering online review of their rubbish
service but it doesn’t get Nick’s telly fixed.
Meanwhile
a friend texts to tell me about her father who was admitted to hospital after a
fall and was later discharged without his clothes, specs, personal papers and very
expensive specialist hearing aids. Unfortunately they had all been mislaid. The
hospital will look into it but can’t accept responsibility for lost property,
it is up to the patient to look after their belongings. She is hopping mad as
well as grieving for his helplessness and frailty and I completely understand.
It
is immensely tiring as well as tiresome to be fighting all the time to put
things right for a loved one who can’t do it for themselves, especially when someone
was actually employed and entrusted to organise it properly in the first place.
It
makes me so cross that when the TV aerial company or a council officer fail to
do their job they can just walk away for the night and still get paid, while
family carers have to pick up the pieces in their own time, which is already
taken up with so many other duties of care and often when they’re already
exhausted. Not paid to do it, doing it for love. In time that is so stretched
that it would make your average public servant look like Richard Branson
lounging in his Caribbean hideaway in comparison.
And it's the unfairness of it all that gets me in the gut, that someone like Nick who already has so many odds stacked against them should be at the mercy of sheer carelessness and - well, that's just it isn't it - lack of care. I care, and they say that love can move mountains, but it still won't set up a TV aerial or authorise a housing benefit payment. It's back to the to-do list and the phone calls and the begin again, Finnegan.
It is a long, exasperating business but I guess this too shall pass and it will all come right in the end.
