My care this January

January in review

*

I did not leave the house once, which is typical of the month if I stay in the country. The weather customarily effects my arthritides etc.

*

I had no visitors during the month. Probably best given health-issues (more below)!

*

*

I started February as a continuation of much of January, with diarrhœa!

January gave me two serious bouts. The first we suspect was norovirus which lasted six days and then over a week to recover. Prior to fully recovering I had a further three days of diarrhœa. Again over a week for my system to recover.

I was forced to stop taking most of my meds, as: one, I was really not up to swallowing, I was for the most part sipping liquids; and, two, the medications dehydrate, so the NHS advises to stop until recovered from the dehydrating effects of diarrhœa.

Yesterday I was due to start taking the full dose of the dehydrating medication, which I managed just before a fresh bout of diarrhœa.

Thankfully matters seemed to have stopped me up. [Fingers crossed!]

 

*

January had 31 days.

Housemate gave me 30 meals (4 breakfasts, 5 brunches, 2 snacks, 19 dinners). Of the 19 evening meals, 2 were snacks; only 17 were proper cooked meals. The breakies/brunches were solicited, i.e. only proffered due to my recalling to request. The 2 snacks were unsolicited. I made dinner once with housemate supervising. Over all it works out at an average of one meal per day, where ‘meal’ might be a slice of toast, cereal or a sandwich for the whole 24-hour+ period.

I missed 4 evening meals due to my own illness or because it was too late to eat by the time housemate came home (after 21.00).

Housemate forgot to feed me on 6 evenings.

Housemate was too ill to feed me on 2 evenings.

*

Over the course of the month I was assisted with 3 baths, 0 showers, 0 washing, 0 teeth-cleaning.

*

All in all, this appears to be a typical month, and certainly much better than December’s record.

*

P.S. As ever, my apologies for how Blogger makes the text appear. I have tried other options, but it makes it worse. 

No Food, no Meds, no Care in Trafford

[Image description: assortment of medications in their packaging]

Some of you may have read my blog-post "Disability Discrimination in Trafford" from just over a fortnight ago.

Last week, in a surge of anger I went on to twitter and vented my spleen at anyone I thought might listen at how dilatory Trafford Council have been. Then I slept through the following two days totally exhausted from a combination of the DWP's PIP claim-process and expressing my frustration. I have been physically and emotionally drained ever since, until I woke up this morning with a supply of energy.

Today, I have written to my social worker who had decided to go with two thirty minute slots, one at lunch-time and one at tea-time, but missing out bed-time. [A breakfast call is not suitable for me and is thus not included.] I responded:

Dear [name of social worker],

Thanks for the update.

However, you are wasting your time. Please refer back to the correspondence with yourself, with [name of social care assessor], and my suggested care plan. Your suggestion will mean some 20 mins wasted of a morning session and no assistance for bed-time, with the result I would continue to miss my night-time meds.

The lack of meds over the past few months has meant some of my symptoms have deteriorated sharply.

The fact that neither you, Re-ablement nor the social care assessment team have ensured that you have put in place carers even for the previously assessed needs (Sept 2016), mean Trafford Council has seriously let me down over the past four months. I continue to miss two out of three sets of meds most days and some days all meds. I continue to miss one of the two meals a day I need each and every working day and any day that [name], my housemate, is away at the weekend. During most weeks I am lucky to get one shower/bath now. The situation is outrageous.

Please immediately devise a plan to ensure I am supported appropriately to my needs.

Please immediately sort out some care.

Please immediately forward details of the complaints procedure - although the situation is so egregious, I am considering whether I ought to pursue legal action.

Yours,

Colin

I sent some fifty tweets to media outlets, politicos, disability organisations, etc. I received back just two responses: one from the council asking me to ring them - which I cannot as I do not use telephones due to disability - and the other a link from the CAB abut moving into a new area - yes!?!

So here I am still not being fed (except by housemate of an evening), still missing out on most of my medications and still not receiving the personal care the local authority has already stated and assessed - per their own document - that I need.

Throwing my hands up in the air in total exasperation! Any suggestions?

I am not supposed to get myself stressed: but my heart is pounding, my blood-pressure is up, my temples are throbbing and I think I may need to have a nap.

 

Disability Discrimination in Trafford

[Image description: the writer in his wheelchair]

Since October 2016 I have been waiting for Trafford Council (Greater Manchester, England) to offer me a care-support package. They already know I need the assistance from a review done earlier in 2016. Since then I have been eating just once per day (at most) and missing most of the two out of my three lots of medications per day. From unused meds, I calculate I have missed a minimum of 77 (seventy-seven) daytime sets of meds. I have missed innumerable meals (I have memory issues so cannot say exactly how many; but if we say one meal X five days X thirteen weeks, that comes to a minimum of sixty-five (65)). During the week, I have had no-one to help me change my clothing nor help me clean myself. So, I am left abed without help and unattended till my housemate comes home each evening around six to seven. I have limited energy, which means it usually has to be used for eating my one meal.

If I am not considered a priority, goodness knows who is. A social worker did finally visit on 19th January, but I am still awaiting the assessment & recommendations. The situation has not been this dire for disabled folk since the creation of the Welfare State.
 
Thankfully, I have a housemate (who has no legal nor contractural obligation) who checks on me and feeds me of an evening and at weekends when at home. What happens for those totally on their own?

Apparently, the article in the Guardian (link below) apprises that this situation is now widespread throughout at least England (who knows about the rest of the United Kingdom).

We disablies are often forgotten - including by ministers of the government who only speak of "the elderly" when mentioning social care. This is overt disability discrimination and quite possibly disability hate.

The Social Care Crisis Hits Disabled People Hard.

So Why Are They Forgotten?

Men's Shaving Products: A Comparison Review

I recently reviewed some of Liz Earle for Men's products including their shaving cream. A friend saw my review and asked me to try out Elemis' shaving foam. My housemate and I decided to compare them both with Rock Face's shaving gel, a product we discovered on offer in our local Waitrose last year and to which we were quickly converted due to the really smooth shaves we both obtained.

So here are the three products:

© Liz Earle Sensitive Shave Cream 100 ml @ £11.50

© Rock Face Shave Gel 200ml @ £3.95

© Elemis Ice Cool Foaming Shave Gel 200ml @ £21.00

I tried the Elemis product on two days' worth of growth. I'm afraid to say I did not get as close a shave as with either the Rock Face or the Liz Earle, with patches of stubble remaining on my face despite a fresh blade in my razor. This was most likely due to the blades clogging. (I used to find this a major issue with Body Shop's shaving cream, which was so bad that I had to swap blades after every single shave.) My housemate and I use different razors and both encountered the same issue. Additionally my skin was dried out, as the foam did not seem to moisturise or at least do so effectively. One needs to take into account that we reside in an area supplied with very soft water, so I would anticipate even worse dryness in hard-water areas. There was however no razor-burn effect for either of us.

As well as testing after two days growth, my housemate also tried the Elemis product after one day's growth. He determined that this shave was much closer and smoother. This seems to suggest that as long as one does not have much stubble, the result is as good as with Rock Face's product. However, the latter shaving product in such circumstances represents better value for money, costing slightly less than one fifth of the Elemis gel.

We both consider that the Elemis product is no better than other popular shaving products we have sampled, for example from Gillette.

Recommendations - best buy: unless we discover a fresh product that surpasses it, the Liz Earle shaving cream is, as my housemate phrased it, a "quantum leap ahead" of other products. We are sticking with the Liz Earle. Our runner-up and recommendation as best budget buy is Rock Face's product.