Hi Guys,
This is just a rant because I’m fuming and I know most of you will understand where I’m coming from!
So, from my previous posts, you’ll know my Gran has rapidly progressing MND. She was diagnosed in March of this year, but presented symptoms since June-ish of last year. I’ve been steadily increasing the amount I care for her ever since then.
Even a couple of months ago, when she had to have 4 carers per day to come in and help her eat/dress/wash etc. I was still doing everything else- shopping, cleaning, some cooking, paying bills etc etc.
During this time, my Gran has had visitors, other than me, that showed their faces maybe once every week or once every couple of weeks and did absolutely nothing (with the exception of my Gran’s sister who used to bring up some meals she’d pre-cooked or some odd bits of fruit or something). Everything else was left to me and not one person offered to take over even half of what I was doing (even though I’m the only one young enough to still have to go to work every day).
Life toddled on and, at the end of June this year, Gran finally decided the disease was getting too bad and moved into a local Nursing Care Home. Again, it was me who did all the packing of her stuff and trying to get her to decide what to do with more precious possessions and even taking certain things to relatives’ houses so they didn’t even have to come and pick them up themselves (as I knew they’d leave it too late to do so if given the option).
Of course, now that there’s no ‘practical’ things to help my Gran with, she’s got visitors at the home every single day. Whilst I’m happy she now gets to see people other than me, I’m so angry because it’s like ‘where the hell were you when you could have helped?!’
Aside from this, I now have the horrid task of clearing my Gran’s house out (as it’s a council property and she’s got a month before the keys need to be handed back). I’ve exhausted myself doing this since the day she moved into the Nursing Home to make sure it’s all done on time (to the point I’ve now got a chest infection and feel quite poorly, no doubt from all the stress). Of course, I have also had to be the person to notify all of the relevant organisations of the move (i.e. council tax, housing benefit, telephone, TV license and so on). So, I’ve done nearly all of it in just over a week.
Today, I had to rush out of work to let someone in to come and remove the hospital bed from the house. When I turned up, my Gran’s sister, brother and his daughter were already there, pulling up plants in the garden to take home with them (all fine as my Gran said that they could).
They clearly saw that most of the house was organised and ready for the clearance company to collect that which nobody else had ‘claimed’ and chose that specific moment to say to me the following:
“don’t feel like you’re alone- if there’s anything at all we can do to help, like with the house or anything, just let us know”.
I was absolutely gobsmacked and I don’t know where I got the strength from to hold my tongue. The audacity to say that to me after knowing full-well I’ve been struggling to take care of everything for months before now. I can’t even begin to say how insulted I am.
Nevertheless, I decided to test their claim and said ‘oo well, there’s occupational therapy equipment that needs to go back. The earliest date they can collect is 18th July, but they said it can be taken back to their office/depot at any time mon to fri between 9 and 5’. Not one of them offered to take it back or even offered to be in the house ready for the collection to take place.
Just absolutely enraged at the whole thing.