The Unscripted Carer – 1st December 2007
We seem to have found another application of “Murphy’s Law”, i.e. if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. The new application is that “things work OK when you are working, but once you stop working, things round the house also stop working!
Since I stopped working to care for my wife full time, the TV broke, the cooker broke (after only 16 years!); the fridge/freezer needed repairing and now the vacuum cleaner has stopped working. However, vacuum cleaners obviously are less clever than TVs and fridge/freezers – it broke while it was still covered by a 5 year guarantee! We were quite amazed that we could find the extended guarantee, and that it was covered by it. Having recently had some bathroom scales fixed under an extended guarantee from Argos, where we had to do all the hard work and send it back to the manufacturer, it was very nice to be told that the manufacturer (Miele) would take total control. We were told that:
- On Tuesday they would deliver a box for us to put the vacuum cleaner in
- On Wednesday they would collect the box & vac
- They would mend it, service it and provide an extra year’s warranty
- They would return it within 7 working days.
I am a little old and cynical, so imagine my surprise when a box arrived on Tuesday, it was collected on Wednesday, and a working vac was returned on Friday – only two days after we sent it away. My only problem now is that I need to destroy the pictures that my beloved “cared for” took when I was vacc’ing on all fours, because the tube, etc was no longer in one piece!
With hindsight, being forced into a new TV allowed us to buy one that also acts as the monitor for the old computer that is used to produce this blog. It means that my wife can see the computer “screen” even if she is having a bad day, and has to use her day bed in the front room. So maybe Murphy’s law has an upside to it?
Because my wife is basically housebound, we were not sure how to buy our Christmas presents this year. We stumbled across the two shopping chancels (Bid TV and Price Drop TV) and we/she have done quite a lot of our Christmas shopping using them – the big advantage is that anything you need to post to friends and distant relatives comes ready boxed! So far she has resisted the “girly” temptation to stay glued to a shop window and buy everything in it! Unfortunately we have just got a new laptop that is connected to the internet, and today (19th November) has just evaporated! We have long resisted the “siren call” of the internet, I must hope we don’t become addicted.
My Carer Support Worker (Pam) has a lot to answer for in this area, she has been urging us to “get connected”, as she is concerned that we will have nothing to do, as if…..!
A few years go we had to have an old laurel hedge taken out, as it was getting diseased. We decided to compensate for the loss of the hedge, by putting out a larger and more varied diet for our garden birds. This roughly coincided with Nicola having to stop working, and she has enjoyed watching the birds and squirrels in the garden. I missed most of this when I was working, but now the bird feeding has devolved to me, and we both enjoy watching them. Over time I have got used to this daily pleasure, and so it was quite an eye opener when I was taking the dogs for their early evening walk, that I heard one of our (hawthorn) hedges full of sparrows going to sleep. The chirping noise was almost deafening (OK, give me some poetic licence!) and was a fantastic sound. It was so unusually loud, that it reminded me of the unexpectedly loud noises made by newly born lambs.
The recent change in weather is playing havoc with my various aches and pains, and I am finding it hard to look after myself, let along a poorly wife. The recent carer training that Guideposts are delivering is very helpful, in both the skills that are being passed on, and the pragmatic approach of the team delivering the training. As a carer, my focus is naturally on my wife, and it was quite a shock to be told that I need to look after myself first - if only so that I can look after Nicola.
22nd November started a bad period for us. Nicola’s unstable hips/back decided to become very mobile – needing lots of rest and extra doses of medication, my blood pressure decided to go low, instead of being the normal high, and one of our dogs has decided that we need protecting from the slightest noise, especially when we are asleep. It is very kind of him, but his protective barking has worn us out and him out – our second dog just ignores him and keeps sleeping!
Nicola and I have always resented the implication that carers and “cared fors” cannot think for themselves - during the last few days we have both been totally brain dead and weren’t even up to “not thinking for ourselves”! Nicola’s dad has also just had a heart operation, so she is having to think for her mum and dad as well – not the ideal time. Interestingly the extra stress has put my blood pressure back to its normal “high” state – so my tablets no longer make me ill. The weather is settling – so my joints can now move more easily, Nicola’s dad is doing well (touch wood) and Nicola’s back is becoming slightly less adventurous. She is still hoping to come shopping (a bit worrying that this will be a high spot for her!) while Tesco’s are offering the lure of “double points”. (It works every time!)
As the two of us are a long way from our families, we are very fortunate in having very supportive neighbours, who have been able to provide both moral and actual help for the last two weeks or so.
For the past 69 million years (or so it seems) I have been taking advantage of our new gizmos, to scan old film negatives – I am hoping that today we will complete the scanning of our 35 mm negatives, that date back to 1993. The awakened memories are amazing. The next stage is to scan our “medium format” negatives, largely taken by Nicola when she was more mobile and then to categorise them as rubbish/ OK and file them for future trips back in time. I am a natural technophobe, so it was great for me to see that these things worked, and Nicola was able to point me in the right direction – which cheered her up. Finally we aim to manipulate the better pictures to cut out the stuff that shouldn’t be there, again Nicola will be to the front here! So far we have a mixture of the Jessops software that comes if you print film / digital and ask for a CD (good value at £1.99!), and some specialist photo manipulation software that has cost us £0.82 to cover P&P – I do enjoy a bargain, and don’t really care if the company has brought out a new version of the software that costs about £100.
We would never have done this (photo stuff) if we had both been working, or even when only I was working. However, it is a good “hobby” that can be carried out at home, and allows us to be creative by how we manipulate the images.
I hope to start making a record of Caldecott Park (Rugby) in its current state, and then keep a photo record of the work as the park is improved using the recently awarded lottery funds. I hope that this will be a useful project for me (to take the pictures) and for Nicola to “sort them out”. The aim is to provide a record for the council and the library – as there are very few pictures of when the park was initially created. Sorry if this sounds a bit pompous, obviously the real reason is that we will get a bit of fun out of it!
Bye for now
Graham
