Deaf Carer

 In my last post I discussed the difficulties of comunicating in hospitals, today I'm going to extend that and talk about rehab after surgery. After the sucessful femur surgery my caree was moved to rehab at a smaller hospital.  Unfortunately in rehab "care" isn't provided and that made life difficult.  Her legs were going uncreamed and as a result drying out and splitting open, meds weren't cut up so they could be easily swallowed and went untaken, meals weren't soft palate friendly and "it's a hospital we cater en masse not for individual requirements" was repeated to me on a daily basis, support for drinking with arthritic hands didn't happen, the list of inadequate care for someone who was unable to care for themselves was long and the daily fight over it was stressful. Needless to say for someon who was already experiencing reduced kidney function being unable to drink didn't help and she quickly became dehydrated yet my requests for...

 As always I'm writing this after the fact and as you've no doubt realised it's been a long time since I last blogged.  There are various reasons for this, primarily the level of care I was providing had to increase and with it the length of my days and I can safely say I never want to do 40 hour days again! As often happens when you care for someone there are things outside of your control and that means either hospital outpatient appointments or inpatient times.  For me that came because we were awaiting an assessment for more eqiupment that had previously been refused.   Whilst we were waiting my caree had a fall.  A fractured femur that required surgery.  Unfortunately to mkae things slightly more complicated the fractured femur was on the same side as the pelvic TB was it's worse.  As a result there was no way she was going to be using that leg as much as mobility was going to be even restricted.   The other leg had severe arthritis...