Little Big Fears

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.

Kensington Gore

We went back to the dietician today to check on Nick’s weight and blow me down, not only has he put back all the weight he’d lost before Christmas, he has gained another 20lbs. Actually, more. He weighs over 13 stone now, which is a good four stone heavier than I am. No wonder he is such a bugger to push in the wheelchair.

And no wonder his shorts didn’t do up when we tried them on the other day to go out on our picnic in the nice bank holiday weather. I noticed he was getting a bit of a paunch but just thought it was the result of all the feeding up and that it was better for him to have a bit of extra weight on him – well, the feeding up has clearly done the trick a little too well, especially as Nick is now taking three different fairly heavy duty meds to calm his movements, and they are definitely working. His spasms are much less pronounced and he is sleeping a lot. I don’t really like this, the fact that he is on the super heavy-duty knock-out pills, just like Ma.

But given the choice between the motionless flat-out slumber I see him in now, and the awful constant jerking and flailing and inability to get comfortable anywhere, anytime, ever – I guess that’s the way it has to be. At least his sleep is peaceful. So he isn’t using up anything like as many calories by just being alive. 

We need to keep his weight stable, says the dietician, it’s always better for anyone with HD to have a bit of extra ballast, but that’s a lot of weight to gain in a short time and he needs to be healthy too.

So it’s back to semi skimmed milk instead of full fat, just banana with his porridge rather than cream and honey too, and although he’ll continue to have an extra tea time visit from the carers to make him a milkshake, he’ll just have that now and not the potato cakes or syrup pancakes to go with it. Job done. We have fattened him up like a prize bull. Now to put the brakes on a little.

Actually, I feel the same. After being so ill at Christmas and New Year, and then hurting my back and for two months not being able to exercise or walk for miles the way I normally would, I have gained weight too. I’ve not even been swimming as much. It has made me a bit depressed. I’m annoyed with myself for it, but at the same time, a slice of toast or two is sometimes the biggest comfort. 

Now summer is coming and my back is much better and I want to be able to wear my nice dresses again and fit into my jeans without having to undo the top button.

So we’ll both be watching our weight, which makes me smile really. For the first time in our long and colourful history, I will be my brother’s Diet Buddy.

We always like going to see the dietician as she’s in a health centre in a part of town we don’t have any other reason to go to, and the shops there remind us both of Consett. 

After leaving the clinic we went to the cool charity shop where Nick has always found new clothes, and bought him a pair of light trousers with a drawstring waist ( very handy) and to Poundland for a bucket and washing stuff so the carers can soak his clothes and bedding when he’s had an accident. Happening increasingly frequently although Nick is still either oblivious or not admitting it -  I can’t tell yet. Then we bought a load of food to make some calorie conscious meals to kick off his new regime. Semi skimmed milk, lower fat cheese and houmous, yoghurts… at the counter, paying, Nick suddenly barked at the cashier,

“Where is your toilet?”  Like a six year old, he’d sworn to me that he didn’t need to go when we were back at the health centre. Now suddenly he was desperate. The cashier looked blank. Not the sympathetic type.

Nick, I said, This is Poundland, not a public convenience! We’ll go back to the health centre and use the loo there. It's not far.

The kerbs in that area are not graded so not very good for pushing wheelchairs or prams. When that happens I might normally go round to the next chamfered kerb via the road, but this one is a dual carriageway ring road, the kind where the traffic never stops, so no. I braced myself to heave Nick up the last step onto the pavement, aware even more of his weight now that I knew exactly how heavy he was. It was the first time I had taken him out since I’d hurt my back, too.

I thought I could do it but, “I need the toilet, Sis!,” and he suddenly gave one of his unpredictable backward lurches and his arm flailed out, taking us both a bit off balance, and reader, I couldn’t hold on to him and the wheelchair tipped right over backwards, Nick landing with his legs in the air and his head in the road. I’d had a small bag of shopping over my shoulder and I must have dropped that as I tried to grab him to stop him going over, and all I could see was a smear of red on the black tarmac next to Nick’s head and I screamed.

“PLEASE! Can somebody help us!”

Two women in tabards came over from a café. Together we managed to right Nick and get him sitting up and then somehow, by the grace of God, manoeuvre him back into the chair, which now had a broken handle, one of the brakes snapped clean off by the force of his weight and strength.

“Are you all right, Nick?” I checked frantically for the source of the blood. Realising with relief that a bottle of tomato ketchup was smashed and dripping from my bag. Not blood, but good old Kensington Gore.

“I’m fine” – and he really did seem to be. As we’ve said before, he rolls like a paratrooper. But I felt horror and deep shame to have put him in that position, with his head in the road and cars whizzing past at 40 miles an hour. The bucket was broken,  I’d had it hanging by the handle onto the wheelchair. Our shopping was squished. My hands and knee were grazed where I'd tried to get between brother and hard ground as the chair tipped over. But Nick was fine. Not only that but he had managed not to wee himself, which is almost more than you could say about me under the circumstances.

Anyway, thank goodness we were right next to the health centre. Mission accomplished, toileted, wiped down and checked over, we drove back home and installed Nick in his chair with a drink while I unpacked the remains of the shopping. I made him some lunch. Omelette and mashed veg, followed by banana and ice cream. He yummed it all. 

He insisted that he felt fine and I went back later to check and make sure that he really was, and he was happily watching rugby on TV and asking me to hang up his new trousers. He was also looking forward to trying the low fat yoghurts we’d bought, miraculously unscathed after their adventure, and now washed clean of tomato ketchup and pumpkin soup.

The wonder of the decreased cognitive awareness and poor short-term memory!

Thank all our stars he was OK and no bones broken or any trauma as far as anyone could tell. 

But I was in a state of shock for the rest of the day. Once again, I see that I can't do some things on my own any longer and need to recognise that. But I'm not sure where we go from here. 

Spoke Too Soon

Here comes the rain again…the rain of meteorites that seem to pick their moments and shower down all at once on the day you decided to leave the house without an umbrella.

So, spoke too soon about breathing space. Really, what was I thinking?

The sodding TV has stopped working again. Nick has broken a fifth, or is it sixth remote control, and now can’t even switch the television on at the plug.

Like everything else, it’s just not Huntington’s proof. Simon spent the whole evening fiddling with it but neither of us are technicians and the manufacturers in the call centre are only able to do so much of a diagnostic from a distance. Is it worth just throwing money at it and buying a new television altogether, I wondered, and then looked at the prices and felt like crying.

And even if either of us could afford it, I can’t see what difference a new TV would make; of course we could get a cheap television quite easily, even a secondhand one, but no. He wants a smart TV so he can have a wide choice of channels, radio, films, iplayer and most of all Netflix, all the things that brighten up his days.

And smart TVs have software that goes wrong, and can only be operated by remote controls that break when they get thrown on the floor. Why aren’t there any TV repair men any longer, like we had the olden days? The smart TV revolution has changed all that. There don’t seem to be televisions that can be fixed by twiddling a few knobs and switches now, it’s all done now over the phone via a call centre.

The thing is, Nick has nothing else. He likes the newspaper but it takes him a week to read the small tabloid sized i, his powers of concentration are dwindling, and his constant chafing and plucking shreds it to a rag after a couple of days. He can listen to the radio but has to keep the sound down because of Vic, and really he just wants to lose himself in the box set binge and the escape of the moving image.

It’s the mainstay of his life – apart from wine, and actually I’d almost say he’d rather have the television than the wine. Especially Netflix. Whenever Netflix goes down, for various reasons, it seriously affects his mood. He drinks more, he’s low; it might sound like a First World Problem but think about it, he has so little else. 

So we have to sort it out.

In addition to this, we’ve had a letter from the NHS business centre fining Nick £100 + costs for ticking the wrong box for a prescription in September.

Ridiculous! We said. Of course, he’d done no such thing. But the computer said yes he had. I did a bit of investigating and it turned out that a few months ago the District Nurse had alerted the GP about the sore looking cracks in Nick’s fingers. A cream was duly prescribed and delivered, which the carers have been using assiduously (once they realised that it was for his hands, not his bottom) and his fingers are much better.

I had nothing to do with this, and apparently it was the GP who made out the prescription and ticked whichever box on his behalf. The surgery say it wasn’t a GP, it was the pharmacy. The pharmacy say they can’t trace that and it was probably the carers who ticked the box when they collected the meds. No-one can admit accountability, so it’s our problem. So-ree.

I’ve written back to NHS business to explain that it was evidently an error by a medical practitioner and could they please take it up with the GP surgery and pharmacy themselves, but they’re having none of it.

As far as they’re concerned, Nick is liable to a penalty charge for fraudulent behaviour. They expect a written response from Nick himself and won’t even talk to me until I’ve submitted original documents proving my Power of Attorney, and a covering letter signed by a medical professional vouching for my authenticity and for Nick’s lack of capacity. By next week. 

When I think of all the high end fiddling that goes on in the business world, the absolute shambles of Brexit and all the people who are PAID TO DO THEIR JOBS, it seems even more iniquitous to target the vulnerable who are already struggling desperately just to get through each day.

The general opinion is that it doesn’t matter that this was a practitioner error that should surely be dealt with through the system not the patient, it can’t (won’t) be sorted out internally through the NHS and it’s poor Nick who’s liable.

I just have to suck it up and provide the documentation like a good girl and alongside trying to sort out the sodding television, kiss another few hours of my life goodbye and try to wade through all this treacle.

What's broken cannot be unbroken, but I like to think a heart can mend

Today I was walking past a local cafe feeling happy and light of heart. I saw someone I knew sitting by the window; we nodded to each other and smiled, and automatically I smiled too at the person he was with, a proper, open-hearted glad to be alive and good to know you smile, and she did the same - except that it was someone who'd fallen out with me some time ago and we have not spoken to each other since. We both smiled at each other before we realised who it was. In that instant, though, it felt like things were healed. We might not ever be friends, but something just mended in a glance, like some invisible clicking back into place.

Nick's fifth remote control has broken and we are waiting for a replacement to be sent out. It's been a week now. The TV is now out of warranty but we're getting the remote free as a goodwill gesture so I can't make too much of a fuss, but until it arrives he can only watch one channel on his television with an annoying error signal flashing on and off which would do my head in after two seconds but he seems to be able to ignore. I curse the day we bought the bloody smart TV, it's been nothing but trouble, but it's also a lifeline for him.
I did buy a universal remote when we first realised that the TV remote was so vulnerable to being chucked around and bashed, but we've never been able to match it to the television. The OT has been trying to install a bionic arm that attaches to Nick's table to grip the remote more securely, and she brought along her technical team to help, and they couldn't get it to match so I know it's not just me - it's a combination of annoying so-called smart TV and the Nick factor.

Meanwhile, the big comfortable black chair that Nick sits in all day has broken. I got a text from him yesterday to say that a wheel had fallen off - and it surely has. The chair is capsized in the corner like some poor broken creature. The company who fitted it say they can't do any repairs until they get a referral from the NHS, as although they supplied the chair, it was the NHS physio who made the purchase and therefore it's up to her to instigate a repair order. What, even in dire emergency? But they're adamant that they need the physio's sign off but she won't be at work again until the end of next week and emergency or no, there seems to be no Plan B.
Thankfully we still have the old orthopaedic chair I got for peanuts on the Abbeydale Road, and Nick can sit in it reasonably comfortably, but not for too long before his body starts rebelling. He is playing musical chairs with that and the armchair supplied by the council, which has always been too low for him to easily get out of.
Two of his absolute basics have disintegrated, and I feel so helpless for him. It's like some kind of horrible party game where all his favourite things are taken away, one by one. Still, we keep cheerful. He's really looking forward to Christmas and I am planning some treats for him. Tonight we're going to hear a friend's choir, and we'll have some Christmas lunches. If you're reading this and you're within shouting distance, get in touch, we'll be here and we're up for some festive jollies.

But thinking back to seeing the woman I had fallen out with; even though Nick's special things are broken and it's frustrating and sad for him, he's in good spirits. The breakages are constant; it's one of the features of Huntington's that you might not hear so much about but for us it's non stop, and it's hard to anticipate what's going to go next, or the difficulty level of getting it replaced or repaired.
If you or I broke our glasses or the car wouldn't start, it would be annoying and inconvenient but we'd manage; for Nick, he has so few resources that if his TV and hearing aids and radio and chair stop working and we're not there, then he's effectively in solitary confinement.  It's amazing then that he is so phlegmatic about it all.
In his pyramid of human needs, physical comfort and company from the TV are so important, but the really essential things are his human relationships and the cuddles he gets with his cat. These keep him going. And having such a short term memory that he can't remember enough to bear a grudge, so he stays open hearted like a child. I think as the silly season races up ahead, that it's probably a really good way to be.

Dealing with Overwhelm

I’m interested to know how other carers deal with overwhelm. The sense that it’s all too big for anyone to handle, let alone you. That it’s all coming at you like a meteor storm and you’re so tired you just want to lie down in the midst of it, sucking your thumb.

Seeing other people get on with their lives while yours is stopped in its tracks, taken over by the needs of a needy person.

Hi-jacked by your love for someone who isn’t ever going to get better. Trying so hard to make it right for them, but getting into fights along the way like a mediaeval knight trying to protect his princess from dragons.

There is so much coming at me at the moment that it’s almost laughable. Where do I start?

Nick’s neighbour is still on the rampage and as well as the smashed door incident there have been three occasions in the last month that I’ve had to call the police. The crazy thing is, there is no noise coming from Nick’s TV or radio anymore as the hearing loop is working and we took his bedside CD player away weeks ago. What exactly is he hearing to upset him so much? Now there is talk of re-housing and an Anti Social Behaviour Order – at the moment just talk though. While the police have been brilliant, the council are dragging their feet.

And Nick’s bathroom door handle is coming off again. Last time this happened, I phoned the council repair team who told me they didn’t class it as a risk, resulting in Nick getting stuck in the bathroom and having to be rescued by emergency services. Need to call them in again, when I can summon up the strength to wait on the phone for forty minutes. 

The carers have taken on Nick’s nutritional needs but the ABC of no-brainer risk assessment seems beyond them. Yesterday I arrived ten minutes after they had left, to find water all over the kitchen floor. It looked as if someone had put the washing machine on the wrong cycle again. Did they not notice, or have any concerns about Nick coming in to get his wine (which he does at very regular intervals) and slipping?

In the bathroom, meanwhile, the bottle of bleach was sitting beside the loo with its top off. Words absolutely fail me. These are adults, supposedly trained in health and safety and the care of vulnerable persons. Paid to do this job. Not very well paid, but paid more than I am to be on their case like this day in, day out.

Our landline is not working. I don’t know why.

And a relative I’ve never met from New Zealand is coming to stay with us for three days. I’m picking him up in an hour. I want to meet him – his dad, my cousin, was a very good friend of mine back in the day and we have a shared gene pool, thankfully on my dad’s side so HD free. But I have no idea how to even begin to entertain him, let alone explain how things are for us. Though I suppose if he is here for even a few hours he might understand the crack, and also why our house is so unkempt and grimy.

And there’s more, so much more, going on, but enough already.

The only reason I have time to write this is that I’m waiting at Nick’s for a delivery.

Anyway – worse things happen at sea, I tell myself. I have recently gone back to an old love and started doing an I Ching reading every day. It always calms me down and every time the message is absolutely spot on. Today it more or less told me to stop mithering and get on with it, basically “keep calm and carry on” in Chinese script. Someone somewhere probably has that as a tattoo. 

It also told me that I can’t do any more than I can actually do, and to step back a bit and let other people do some of the work.

Once again, this is the hardest one for me, and if you too are caring for someone, I bet it is for you. As I’ve said before, I would love to delegate more to other people but so much of the stuff I have to deal with for Nick is up to me as the legal deputy and next of kin.

However, I’m just gently flagging up the possibility that the world won’t end if I leave our visitor to his own devices for a couple of hours tomorrow and go for a swim, or ask a friend with a car if she could take Nick to the dentist.

Perhaps this is the only way to deal with overwhelm – just go really carefully, one small step at a time, and keep on walking bravely through the storm.

Is there a Handyman in the House?

I saw a cartoon once that showed a fridge chatting to a washing machine.

“Our guarantee runs out next week. Then we can have some fun!”

It still makes me smile – it’s just a rueful one. Domestic appliances are tricky at the best of times but factor in the effects of HD and you are looking at a constant list of repairs and replacements. Hearing aids. Glasses. Phone. Chairs. Tables. Bed. Toilet seat. Handles. Lamps. Cooker knobs. Fridge door, and one by one, all the shelves.

The TV has not been working properly for a month and after two replacement remote controls and almost daily calls to the manufacturer’s helpline, we’re beginning to think it is something to do with the old HD super-strength involved in Nick just switching it on and off. Now the washing machine has conked, although Nick has never used it and I suspect the carers who have suddenly become aware of its existence.

Terrific! Another hour spent on hold trying to book a repair! Just what the doctor didn’t order.  

When I think of the one thing that would improve the quality of Nick’s life, the absolute one thing, it’s not more friends or hearing implants or even the return of his missing cat.

No. It would be a live-in handyman who could fix anything. This handyman would have a pocket full of Allen keys and spanners and turn his handy hands to whatever needs sorting. Oh how worth his weight in gold he would be (though maybe it could be a she, even nicer) I’m kind of imagining a granddad character though, a granddad that Nick and I never had but who in my fantasy would live in cryogenic suspension in Nick’s broom cupboard until required again. Everything would be in its place, with silhouette outlines of all the different tools drawn on the wall. Our handyman would whistle, drink cups of strong tea with three sugars and smell pleasantly of sawdust and Werther’s originals, like a character invented by John Shuttleworth.

In his spare moments in the broom cupboard he’d whittle a bird box and fashion miniature animals out of leftover putty. And he could fix EVERYTHING, cheerfully and on the spot. Nick would never have to sit helplessly waiting for someone who could get things working again, it would just magically get done. 

I’ve fallen a little bit in love with my vision of this handyman, but in the meantime there is Sheffield council repairs service, superglue and Yellow Pages.

I also have a new idea for a clinical trial. Combine it with white goods testing and pay people with HD to use the appliances for a week or two. Manufacturers would soon learn about the toughness or endurance of their products! Maybe I could take this idea to Lord Sugar. You’ve got to admit, it’s a winner.

Passive Agressive Memo

Hey! Sheffield City Council! Thank you for teaching me the virtue of patience while I wait on hold as you search for any record of our previous conversation.

There’ve been a few of those so I can see why it might be confusing.

But look, don’t worry that your staff didn’t turn up for their appointment yesterday to take that spare bed away from my brother’s flat. They didn’t leave a message or anything so maybe something awful had happened, do let me know you’re OK, won’t you? It was so thoughtful of you to give us a generous two hour appointment slot but explain that the men could come in even if my brother didn’t hear the buzzer, because they have the keysafe number. It's so reassuring to think that they can come in any time!

Oh, and that other no-show appointment the other week? The one to fix the wonky handle on my brother’s bathroom door? The one you didn’t think was much of an emergency, and obviously you’re the council so you know best. I’m just a boring old health & safety nut with nothing better to do than think ahead, I know, silly me, still you were kind enough to agree to send your repairs team for a look.

That must have been another time when something awful happened to prevent anyone coming when they said they would, or getting in touch. You poor things! So accident prone! Well don’t worry about that, as you’ll know by now, the Citywide Alarm Team managed to get him out when the handle came off altogether and he was stuck in the bathroom - he was fine, nothing else broken, just the door and a few little bruises.

Oh and these phone calls? I hope I’m not being a nuisance? Sorry if I’m keeping you away from more important things you should be doing. It’s just that as I was saying, I’ve got nothing better to do all day and it helps to while away the time. And it’s so cheap to call you, too!

Anyway, thanks for all your help. And for that lovely soothing music you’ve been playing while I’m on hold on the phone. So thoughtful. You make me feel special, like you really care.

A Small (Room) Emergency

“Oh, dear, what can the matter be, three old ladies locked in the lavatory…”

We used to sing that at primary school and it seemed hilarious. It came into my head this morning as I prepared to phone the local council and (very old lady-like) give them a piece of my mind.

The handle of Nick’s bathroom door started coming loose just after New Year and I thought we must keep an eye on it. 

By the day of his party, the metal plate had worked itself away from the wood, a couple of the screws were hanging perilously out of their plugs and Simon had to bring his toolbox round to screw it all back in.

At the old flat, he’d pulled the towel rail right off the wall in the first week. We thought that it was pretty amazing if this was the only casualty so far of his well-known super strength, and I felt quite pleased, thinking that this place obviously suits him better, is much more spacious for manouevre and seems to be a lot sturdier under the constant crashing and bumping around.

By the weekend the handle was only hanging on by a thread like a wobbly tooth. The wood around it was so wrecked that it needed some proper attention beyond our first aid, and I phoned the repairs team at the council the day after his birthday and booked an appointment for their handyman to come round. No problem, we'll see you on Tuesday. Gosh, the joys of being a council tenant! I thought. Except not, because he didn’t turn up.  I was away for a couple of days visiting our stepmother so I didn’t find out until nearly the end of the week.

I did wonder if he’d come and Nick hadn’t heard the buzzer, but most of the council workers had access to the key safe and the Trade entrance, or would have left a card.

Phoned the council. A surly man on the helpline did not want to help. 

“But this is a health and safety problem!”

He told me that it didn’t sound like an emergency and he couldn’t book another visit until the end of the month.

“Please. Can’t we do anything sooner, given that this is a vulnerable person and we’ve already had a missed appointment?”

Nope. Talk to the hand. The computer says No.

A few days later I tried again and spoke to a nice woman who said she couldn’t get an appointment any sooner but she would log a complaint about the no-show. Should we just find our own handyman and get it done privately? No, she says, as it is a furnished property and therefore needs to be dealt with by the council service.

So we’ve had the whole thing taped up with gaffer tape and tightened up the last shaky screw head every time we’re there, but it’s been an accident waiting to happen.

It’s no use reminding Nick to leave the door open when he goes to the loo, because he says “I will” and then always forgets and slams it shut.

And sure enough, last night I got a call from the Citywide Alarm service saying they were with my brother who had been stuck in the bathroom unable to open the door as the handle had fallen off altogether. Thank goodness he’d been wearing his alarm pendant, which he doesn’t always remember to do.

Thank goodness he is a bit dazed but totally matter of fact about it, safe and not in any way hurt.

When I go round later to make sure all is well, he tells me “a man from the council has been round to say the door will be fixed tomorrow”

Wow, that was fast! The alarm team must have raised their concerns and it’s finally got things moving. It seems to take an accident for that to happen, I think to myself and not for the first time.

So this morning I phoned up to check that someone really will be coming today, as we were going to take Nick into town to get his broken glasses fixed. Another helpful woman had a look and said, yes it is on the list but not necessarily marked as urgent, however she would escalate it to an emergency call out to be made within four hours.

Four hours have passed. 

I have a bad feeling about this...