I’m a bit thrilled. I’m going to be on the radio. The Radio 4 show, You and Yours have just asked for my views on Independent Living. I want to be prepared so I started to make notes but got a bit distracted and started watching Big Brother instead.
Take 12 complete strangers. Put them in a shared house. Remove their privacy. Remove their dignity. Have them perform pointless tasks each day. Have them live off a limited food budget. Have their every move and choice taken away from them as they’re controlled by an authoritarian figure.
So that’s where Endemol got the idea for Big Brother from – residential care! No choice. No privacy. No dignity. I can see the similarities.
I’m surprised the TV companies haven’t noticed this obvious connection, cut out the middle man and just made a reality show in a residential care home. A constant 24 hour a day stream of footage where viewers can vote for who they want to survive each week. The loser wouldn’t get a few boos from the crowd and a pep talk from Davina but instead would be wheeled away and never heard from again.
Then I started to think about the other options facing someone like me, someone who needs a hand to boil an egg, put on her socks and wipe her bum.
I guess I could get an assistance animal. They might work for some but dogs helping you get dressed? doing your shopping? doing your laundry? Fido may be able to pull your smalls from the washer/drier but won’t they be covered in his doggie slobber? And, who’s going to iron them? The assistance monkey? No, until there’s an assistance pony, parrot or poodle that can help me to go the loo, frankly, I’m not interested.
On the positive side, you could be offered home or agency care. I’m sure there’s a time and a place for plastic gloves, aprons and nurses uniforms but not in my house! They can’t do shopping, hoovering or cooking for health and safety reasons – they can only stay for 5 minutes because there’s another 18 ‘clients’ to ‘toilet’ before the end of the shift. They will, however, try and pop in at a time convenient to you – anytime between 8 am and noon to get you up? There is one good thing about traditional home care, it makes residential care look not so bad after all!
Maybe some independent living equipment would help? Like most cripples I also have ‘the cupboard’. You know what I mean. You have one too. That cupboard, drawer or room that becomes a graveyard for all the unwanted technical aids that the Occupational Terrorist has decided you need:
I wanted an accessible kitchen. I got a kettle tipper.
I wanted personal assistance to help me get dressed. I got a button hooker.
I wanted an adjustable bed. I got a foam wedge.
I wanted a holiday in the sun. I got respite at the sunshine care home.
Only on one occasion have I been offered something more than I asked for. All I wanted was a raised toilet seat. Before I could say ‘incontinence pants’, I found myself sitting uncomfortably, and rather embarrassingly, on a fully flushing closomat toilet in the middle of my living room while a horde of professionals were talking over and above me. For the uninitiated, a closomat is a toilet that shoots water up your bits to clean you and then blows hot air to dry you off. Nice.
My stiff and unbending body was not taking too kindly to being balanced precariously on the edge of the toilet seat, though, and I was not taking kindly to being ignored.
The dapper little salesman was concerned that my handicapped hips would mean the blasts of water and air would hit anything but the intended target. The OT was calculating the cost. The toilet technician was having a fag.
What happened next seemed to pass in slow motion. Without warning, the toilet seat gave way and inch by inch my hips edged forward until my knees were bent back more than any physiotherapist had ever forced them. In what felt like a surreal out of body experience, I watched myself slipping away until I was lying on my lovely cream carpet.
While the professionals were worrying about how to get me off the floor without hurting their backs, I called out to my personal assistant who came in immediately and assisted me in the way I wanted.
“So…” I said to the OT, “any chance of that raised toilet seat then?”
Taken from: BBC-OUCH( http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch)
Liz Carr