9am
I’ve had to call in a plumber to look at Nick’s toilet, which is tilting at a
strange angle with the cistern coming away from the wall. We’ve been here
before…at the previous flat, where twice Nick pulled the washbasin off the wall
and then dislodged the toilet too in the space of a few weeks.
I recognise the plumber, he's been here before when the wet room was first installed. He thinks it's a simple job but I offer him a hot drink and we have a joke about how he can stomach swigging tea while poking around in somebody's soil pipe.
An
hour later, he’s sitting on the floor amidst slabs of dismantled plastic,
phoning his gaffer. He can put everything back today and refix it against the
wall but it will only be a temporary solution. The whole thing is coming away
not just from the wall, but actually parting company from the huge bolts going deep into the
floor. It’s a solid, specialist
self-flushing toilet for people with impairments and he installs them all the
time but he says he’s never seen anything quite like this.
“It must have taken some force to move them
bolts”.
Yeah.
Welcome
to our world, I say, standing in the doorway where I notice the handle is also
starting to come loose again, the screw heads working their way out like worms
after rain.
The
plumber has asked his gaffer to call the OT and advises I do too, to make sure
she knows this is urgent because it’s only going to hold for a limited time and
then the whole thing is going to go. Horrible visions of Nick on the floor,
collapsed amongst the ruins of a broken toilet in a pool of piss, or worse.
11.15am
The plumber has gone, I’ve left an answering machine message with the OT and I’m
drinking coffee with Nick who had slept soundly through all the drilling and
clanking. I’ve unearthed some wonderful old photos of us as children and we’re
having a giggle at our clothes, woolly balaclavas and cardis knitted by our
gran, Nick’s tartan bow-tie (what a thing to do to a child, he was only four)
and my gap teeth.
The
carers have not yet arrived to give him his shower and breakfast. Yesterday
they didn’t turn up at lunchtime at all. Luckily I was around and could nip
over and make him a late lunch – 3.30, practically tea – and give him his
tablets.
The
care agency weren’t sure what had happened. Their timings have been going
really off again and I’m worried.
We’re
going on holiday in two weeks’ time – me, Simon and Dill, the first holiday we’ve had together in
years, an actual, proper holiday - but I don’t know if I can do it. How can I leave him
like this?
His lovely PA has said she’ll look after him and that was really the
thing that made me feel able to go for it in the first place, but oh the things
that can, and do, go wrong. Today being a fine example.
I'm not being pessimistic. Just, this is how it is. When
the carers are late or don’t turn up at all, when another thing suddenly gives under
the force of Nick’s super strength, you’ve got to sort it out.
And
then the sheer range of minor crises that happen every single day – the lost
hearing aids, the hearing loop not working, the fall, the spilled wine that has
drowned his phone, the remote control dying, the payment not going through due
to insufficient funds, the neighbour banging at the door and swearing at the
carers outside – all of these things are just like background music to the
daily pattern of Nick’s life. They still have to be dealt with.
It
is a big ask for someone else to take on.
