Good morrow, my poor neglected Malpals, you're all looking fine! Please forgive me for my absence! I haven't been doing great the last few weeks. But I write to you today in a state of happiness far greater than any post-orgasmic afterglow!
It seems I was taken off my antibiotics too early, as my mastitis never went away, and has now flared up again. I'm seeing a physiotherapist twice a week, though he is not nearly as hands on as the one I had coming five times a week whilst I was living on my own. I agreed to move here because my carers at the time told me this was a dedicated rehabilitation facility, and that I could be receiving physio all day, every day if I wanted it! Eight months without help later and I have a lot less strength and movement. Never mind, at least I'm on the road to success again!
I've also had two episodes of hamster heart since I last checked in! Regular readers will know that's my jokey name for supraventricular tachycardia, a condition that causes my heart to beat at around 265bpm. You'd think it would be awesome, like when Fry drinks 300 cups of coffee in Futurama and time seems to slow down for him, or when Neo dodges bullets in The Matrix. What actually happens is your blood moves through your lungs too quickly to take on oxygen, and you die if the issue doesn't resolve itself. Fortunately both times I was able to sort it through tilting my bed (I'm bedridden and living in a care home, if this is your first time reading this!) but on multiple occasions it's needed treatment in hospital, with pretty serious drugs. It can (and nearly did!) require defibrilation. Well, of the two times I had it only once did my so-called "carers" ring the emergency bell for the nurse, though I asked for it both times.
The first time it happened I told the carer, in front of the nurse, that it's a serious condition and I need her to ring the emergency bell if I ask her to. I expected the nurse to have my back. Instead the carer told me that she has to use her own judgement before ringing the bell, and would only ever ring it if a patient was out cold. I told this to another nurse and she said I should have reported the carer; I said another nurse had witnessed the whole thing and hadn't said anything. The head carer submitted a report to the manager for me before, and nothing was ever said about it. Why waste my time? Surely telling two nurses is reporting it? My patience with this place has basically eroded at this point.
The second time the carer did ring the emergency bell, after I insisted, and the nurse left me unattended for five minutes whilst he went to look for an oximeter. A room in this place starts at over £400 a week, shooting up to near £600 depending on the level of care you need. They should really go fuck themselves.
All of which is to say, I haven't been feeling awesome, nothing much good has happened, and so I haven't felt like blogging. Well, that all changed today, because PIZZA!!!
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| I haven't bought pizza since moving in, but I have bought this awesome hat! |
Today was the first time since moving here I've been allowed to order food in. I thought that would be one of the perks of moving to a city. In fact, I was told that I'd be able to eat what I wanted, when I wanted. I thought I'd have my own little kitchen, like I did at another care facility I stayed in for six weeks whilst they tried to find me a flat to move into. Another ruse by my carers at the time! There's only ever a choice of two meals at lunch and one in the evening, otherwise it's sandwiches for you! Most times the evening option is suspiciously sandwich-adjacent, like a burger, hot dog, or bacon roll. It's never a substantial meal: the burger for instance is just a frozen patty cooked and placed on a roll with fried onions. No sauce, no salad, no sides; just a miserable burger on a plate. The hot dog comes with onions too, the bacon roll with butter. The chicken burger comes with mayonnaise. These are not real meals! They're served between 4.30 and 5pm, and are meant to last until breakfast, which happens between 8.30 and 9am. £600 a week!
The meals we get at lunch are the sort of thing you get when people make fun of English or British food. Stuff I've genuinely never seen on the menu at any restaurant, cafe or pub. Stuff most kids or teenagers in this country have probably never heard of, let alone tasted. Stuff like liver and onions, faggots and mash, spotted dick, and semolina. Whatever you order is unseasoned and lukewarm. I just found out writing this that the kitchen manager and care home manager share a surname; that answers a lot of questions.
Breakfast is the one meal that I actually look forward to: two fried egg sandwiches on brown bread. I asked for this for months, and was told I could have it once a week, but that the council were paying for me to stay here so I could lose weight. I've since found out this was never true. I haven't been weighed since coming here, which is another source of frustration: I want to lose weight, and probably am, but with no data there's no way of knowing, which is very unmotivating. If you can't see yourself, and have no number to go by, then how do you know if you're doing well? You don't feel good for sticking to healthy snacks and water, you just feel fucking guilty for enjoying a Pepsi or some proper crisps.
In the end I saw a dietician, kept a food diary for a month and sent back the cold toast I was getting every morning for a week before the manager came and said I could have the breakfast I wanted.
One morning that week a carer came and asked me what I wanted for breakfast. I told her what I wanted and she told me that all I was allowed was toast. I asked why she asked me what I wanted if that was all I was allowed. She said she didn't know. I said "This is a fucking miserable way to start each morning." She told me not to swear at her. I told her I wasn't swearing at her, I was just frustrated by the situation. (People generally know when I'm swearing at them!)
Tonight I made the mistake of needing a piss between 4.30 and 5.30pm. As I said before, this is when the carers are busy dishing out food and helping residents eat it. If you need help then, or during the lunch hour, you have a good chance of being chastised for it, depending on for not your carer is a miserable bastard. Most of them are. I usually avoid going at these times, because I don't like being chided by the whiny carers and genuinely don't like adding to the stress of the overstretched staff as it is. I'm always way more apologetic to the nice ones who wouldn't dream of making you feel bad for having a full bladder. They really are the best people.
Well, like I said, I've just started a new course of antibiotics and they're playing havoc with my sleep cycle and my digestive system. I have a short fuse anyway as I'm on diuretics in order to stop lymph building up in my legs. When I really have to go, I REALLY have to GO! So today I made the cardinal sin of ringing my bell at 17:07!
Wouldn't you know it, I had the same carer come to me that told me off for swearing before. First time I've seen her in a couple of weeks.
"I need a hand with a urine bottle, please," I said. My standard opening line in such circumstances.
"Well, it's supper time, you'll have to wait," I was told.
"I know, and I'm sorry, but I really need to go now." She's known me since I've moved in to this shithole. We both know I know the rules, and that I try not to cause problems.
"Well, I can't help you, because I'm serving food."
"Okay, but I need *somebody* to help me, please."
"Well, everybody's serving food at the minute."I
"Well, I'm going to piss the bed then."
"There's no need to be rude!"
"Well, what else am I supposed to do?"
"There's no need to be rude! Saying that you're going to piss the bed!"
Fucking stopped what she was doing and helped me piss though, didn't she?!
I don't know whether she was offended by my language or if she thought I was threatening her. It wasn't a threat so much as a fact of nature; another five minutes and I'd be asking someone to give me a wash and change my sheets. I was saving us both time and effort! I should point out the carer in question is probably only a couple of years older than I am and that I've heard her use much worse language when she's been in a bad mood. Fucking hypocritical cunt of a nag! (See, that would be swearing at her!)
To cap it all off, it turns out they weren't even serving hot food, and they forgot to give me any! Apparently tonight was pâté, and I was told they ran out because they didn't make enough. This is laughable, it's not like they're baking their own crackers and mincing their own goose liver. The pâté is one of my favourite things they do, though it's always ludicrously out of proportion. You get a massive slab of pâté, maybe two -thirds of an inch by four inches by six, about a third of a slab you might buy from a supermarket. Then there are two semi-circular halves of a thin slice of cucumber sticking out of two generous spoonfuls of pickled ginger. Finally, there are a total of four or five different crackers from a variety of up to three different brands. There is easily enough pâté and ginger for over a dozen crackers, so you end up eating a lot of it without the crackers. I'd have thought the crackers would be the cheapest ingredient and therefore the most plentiful item, but I guess not! Thinking about it, pâté is probably too exotic for pensioners used to two roast dinners a week and fish on Fridays. (A couple of years ago there was a takeaway five miles from here that was controversially named "Foreign Muck," a traditional English term for any food that would appear foreign to King Henry the Eighth.) They probably divide a slab of pâté between the three of us that want it and keep the crackers in the cupboard until pâté is back on the menu in a fortnight.
So I pleaded with the carer that told me they forgot me to ask a nurse to allow me to order something in, and she let me! Food delivery is something that's only been available to me in the last couple of years. The town I grew up in was home to about 11,000 people, with maybe the same again tucked away in villages and hamlets within a five mile radius. There were seven takeaways: two Chinese, two Indian, and three fish and chips. And those were proper traditional fish and chips, that didn't do pizza or kebabs. The only way to have a burger was to get one battered. We only ever ate from one Chinese or one fish and chip place, and only a handful of times over the course of a year.
None of these establishments offered delivery. Only the Indians and one fish 'n' chip place had a restaurant attached. I'd have thought hiring one lad on a moped on busy nights would have been a money maker, but I guess nobody else did. One man at the factory where my dad worked famously had a standing arrangement for a fish and chip shop to make his order and for a taxi to pick it up and take it to him. He essentially invented Uber Eats back in the 1980s!
The first time I ever had food delivered to me was when I was homeless living in sheltered accommodation. I actually wound up eating more than I wanted, because some unbelievable asshole would steal food from the freezers. It was a fair effort to get to a supermarket on my legs, and there was only a small fridge in my room, and the nearest supermarket had a lot of good, cheap, frozen food. We all had allocated space in the freezers, and some selfish dickhead was stealing from us, even though we all basically had nothing. I admit to stealing from a supermarket when I was squatting and penniless. I stole from my millionaire boss and the pockets of customers as I got less and less work. (I was a dry cleaner keeping forgotten cash left in suit pockets; I wasn't a sneak thief or a cutpurse!) I would never have stolen from the other homeless tenants. We all had enough problems. How would you sleep at night?
Anyway, when I moved into my temporary flat there were two choices for delivery: Dominos or a combination Pizza/Kebab/Burger place. The flat didn't have an oven or a stove or any means of cooking other than a microwave. Eventually I bought a stove-top oven but it wasn't big enough for pizza, so I'd order in once or twice a month. Other places delivered once COVID was bad enough to stop restaurants serving but good enough to allow contactless delivery. The trouble then was making sure they delivered during the fifteen or twenty minute window my evening carer was there. This usually wasn't an option.
I ordered in breakfast early on when I was staying here, after asking for permission from two carers, but was then told not to do it for COVID reasons by the manager. I don't really see the difference between ordering a pizza and ordering food and drink from Etsy or Amazon, or even accepting my mail for that matter. Still, them's the rules!
Pizza was on the menu one time here, in the evening. I ordered it, and got one lukewarm slice of gummy pizza with watery chicken and onion that had clearly been frozen. Just like the joke from Annie Hall, the food tastes dreadful and there isn't enough of it!
Well, today I ordered in, and it was the best thing I've eaten since last October. It was warmer than anything I've had within these four walls, though it must have travelled for at least ten minutes and the kitchen here is presumably in the same building. Even better than that was the feeling of control! Food when you're hungry, plus options when you're at the end of your rope? Better than an orgasm, no question!
I love Breaking Bad, but people who like the show and want to be like Walter White are nearly as bad as people who watch Rick & Morty and want to be like Rick. They're missing the point and ruining the perception of the fandom. That said, the one thing I do admire about Walter was his refusal to relinquish control, no matter how bad his health got. Mild spoiler warning for a show that ended eight years ago: Walt is at his absolute lowest in the penultimate episode, hiding away, paying for everything to be brought to him once a month, paying extra to pass time for an hour playing cards with a man he barely knows. When he lets the delivery man deal the cards we know he's given up. At the end of the episode, when we see he's decided to go full Heisenberg and formulate one final gambit, we know Walt's back, and we're going to be treated to a glorious swansong.
That's kind of how I'm feeling these days. I'm reliant on these pricks for so much. I need help getting food and excreting waste. I have no privacy. I'm offered a wash most days, but if I don't want to have a wash when it's offered I probably won't be asked again, so bad luck if I'm expecting the physiotherapist, or on the phone, or just too damn tired at that moment. Tough titties if you don't like the carer that comes to help you. I have little chance to take a stand, but when I do I take it!
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| I bought this little bastard since moving in too, it cost twice as much as the hat and didn't even come boxed! |
So paying for my own Wi-Fi was worth it for the service, for the peace of mind not having to deal with the shitty, shitty, service the home offers, and so that I can make a case that the home aren't acting as they advertise. Getting decent hot food twice a month will do wonders for my mental health, the choice is it's own type of nourishment. The care home, the county I'm living in, and the county paying for my stay have all refused to pay for the special pillows I need to rehabilitate. My occupational therapist is petitioning both county councils, saying that by both denying me the equipment I need to heal they are denying me a fundamental human right. She's also contacting adult social care because the carers should be repositioning me once daily, separate to my wash, and that has never, ever happened, despite me apparently paying for four carers to do it!
I've been complaining to adult social care too, as I feel the home are not dealing with my hamster heart episodes properly. I feel that complaint and the repositioning issue have the best chance of getting some results. The other problems I have can be brought up when I've found someone to listen to me.
Oh yeah, and my main concern at the moment is financial. Like I said way back in February, I was receiving two benefits. One is the basic income the government thinks a person needs to live, the other is a separate benefit that should cover the level of care I need as a person with my level of disability. The second benefit was cut, as I now live in a care home and they should be caring for me. The council helps pay for care home costs according to your needs. Each benefit was roughly £600. When I moved in to the care home the council looked at my finances, and I agreed to pay £450 a month (not that I had a choice!). These are rounded figures, obviously. This gave me lots of money left over for things like snacks and cold drinks. I had money saved away, and still spent a nice chunk on books and pretty statues.
Little bit of politics: I know some people feel benefits should literally only cover the literal necessities to live, but I never asked for these amounts, these figures were calculated for me. Plus I always had my income tax taken from my paychecks and paid all my council tax, even for the property I was squatting in! (Okay, I was a little late on some of those, but I paid it as soon as my benefits were backpaid, ie, when I had the money to do so!) Plus so has everyone else in my family, and everyone else I know. I'm just the unlucky one who needs to take some of it back. I'd rather be earning the money with working legs and paying into the system, but this is the hand I've been dealt.
Well, in February the second benefit was cut. I was a little worried at the time, but I was told the situation would be sorted sometime between a couple of days and a couple of months, depending on how soon adult social care got information from the NHS and the care home about the lengths of my stays and the level of care I've been getting. Well, the care home took nearly four months to fill in the paperwork saying when I arrived here and what my package of care was. The form was sent to the home on the 6th of February and the home sent it back on the 27th of May. Four months. For some wanker here it was an extra bit of paperwork they kept putting off, but for me it's my incone. My livelihood. My life!
When I first went into hospital after becoming homeless I was given a big chunk of cash that put me well in the black, as my disability benefit was backpaid six months. I went from owing my bank £800 and having no access to funds to being £2,600 in the black! For a couple of weeks I was scared to spend it on anything more substantial than a meal deal and a bag of sweets from the hospital WH Smith! After a couple of weeks I got another benefit come in, and ended up replacing my low-end, second-hand laptop with a well-reviewed, value-for-money gaming laptop. My previous one I got a deal on because the case was so banged up, it was great for browsing and watching downloaded movies but not good for games from this decade. It cost £175, £25 less than the same model in a presentable case. This one was also knocked down, plus it was refurbished, and still cost £1,475!
I felt obscene buying for it, like I was doing something dirty, but I figure this one will last, and will still be able to run anything I'm likely to want for years. It's the Vimes Boots Theory of Economics (rich people accumulate wealth because they can afford good stuff and therefore pay less overall; a rich bugger will spend £200 on a pair of boots that will last a lifetime, whilst in the same time a poor bastard will spend £500 buying £10 boots one after the other, and still be the one with wet feet!), and has generally been a dream and is as good today as when I bought it, whilst the previous model was almost dead when I stopped using it. Plus, I felt like I deserved a treat after being homeless for three months and then spending fifty-plus days in hospital!
The one thing I didn't want to do since leaving hospital with that money was to join the 80% of British people currently living with some kind of debt. Well, that happened three weeks ago when my beloved laptop wouldn't restart after a Windows update. I handed over a £20 note to an IT repair guy, and put £40 on my card. Without that second benefit I'm doomed to keep yo-yoing in and out of the red, unless I give up any and all luxuries not offered by the care home; e.g. a cold drink that isn't water, food between 5pm and 8.30am, or Wi-Fi I can depend on.
That's us mostly caught up to date! I need to get back in the swing of things on r/DirtyPenPals. I'm still roleplaying with the trans adult baby girl I apparently never gave a nickname to, and will henceforth be known as Snowball! Not for the sexual act, but as an homage to her favourite stuffed animal! I very much enjoy playing as her caregivers, but our activities are decidedly wholesome. We've spent a fortnight roleplaying a vacation scenario and I value her as a friend, but she's more like a kid or a relative than a sexual woman. It's great making her happy, she has the best reactions to stuff and there's never any head games with her. She reminds me of some of the volunteers I worked with back when I worked in a charity shop, and she also reminds me of shit I'd completely forgotten from my childhood. Plus I get to do stuff you normally need kids for, like telling dad jokes and ancient stories, and looking in rockpools and searching for mermaid's purses at the beach.
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| A mermaid's purse, washed ashore. Where else would she keep her waterproof mascara? |
Things kind of grew stagnant with Babycakes. I want to reach out to her again, because she's whip-smart and seems to appreciate my sense of humour, but she is way too passive and not only goes along with everything I say, but pretty much refuses to tell me anything about her personal life or contribute towards a narrative. She seemed at her absolute happiest laying on the sofa next to me, locked in an over-used diaper, being force-fed until she was supernaturally fat and unable to move. And I get how that could seem like a fantasy for some people - I know there were people who saw Wall-E and thought life on the spaceship could be pretty sweet, actually - but it's way too close to my real life to qualify as escapism or erotica for me! I literally don't know how to move the roleplay on and give her what she wants. Maybe she's looking for more of an authority figure, someone to take her firmly in hand, but she genuinely doesn't seem to care what happens to her, as long as I'm happy. But I don't want to push around a rag doll that'll thank me for treating it however I like. I need to write to her and figure out how to resolve it.
Dear old Strict Julie posted her idea of "The Ultimate Humiliation" over on her blog. As she is fond of saying, your mileage may vary! Well, when I think of humiliation, I think of my old pal Stinky Lips. It's been over a month since I've told her I'd like to write up and publish our encounter, and they say silence is consent, so fuck it, why not? I'm definitely overdue posting something depraved, and by the gods she was good for that! Whilst there were aspects of her humiliation I very much enjoyed, there were parts where I was just trying to see just how much kinky shit this sponge could soak up! The trouble was that she was all gas and no brakes; I loved putting her in awkward situations, but she would suddenly take the controls and go from third gear to fifth with no finesse, and then hand back the wheel when we'd already reached a destination. That's probably a terrible metaphor, but the takeaway is dirty, dirty story coming soon!
One final humiliation of my own, which reiterates just how bad this place can be: I've mentioned in passing that my toilet will often block. I hear that heroin users struggle with using the bathroom. I take morphine daily, which is the closest government sanctioned thing to smack, though not as potent or, from what I can tell, fun! Still, I do deal with constipation, and only shit two or three times a week. When I do go I use a bedpan, and whilst I've never looked directly into one after using it, as far as I can tell I'm essentially pushing a big, solid, lump of shit into a confined space, and essentially create a thick, unflushable, turd. This will almost invariably block the toilet when the carers deal with it. Apparently there's a sluice in the building, and some of the carers have started bagging up my shit and disposing of it that way, rather than blocking the toilet every time. Why it took nine months for somebody to formulate this plan I have no idea. I also have no idea how far the sluice is from my room. Anyway, last week Jane, the miserable, heartless, buzzkill of a cleaner I've written about before came to have a moan at me after unblocking my loo.
"When you have a poo can you tell them to bag it up and take t to the sluice? It's not my job to sort this out," she asked.
"No," I replied. "You're going to have to make a sign." I've long since got used to the indignity of needing to use a bedpan, to have my ass wiped, to have my shit taken away and disposed of. It's embarrassing but necessary. No fucking way am I going to start instructing the carers how to handle my waste! The way I see it, it's the home's responsibility to take that shit and dispose of it hygenically. Once it's out of my arse, it's out of my hands!
Word is spreading. I overheard one carer tell one of the best carers, Sophie, that Jane said she shouldn't have put my shit in the toilet but should have taken it to the sluice. Sophie's response? "I don't care, the home should buy some fucking working toilets." My sentiments exactly!
Well, as usual I've shared more than I expected. Now my laptop is running it'll be much easier to write up my encounter with Stinky Lips. I hope she might even answer some questions about the story, but I haven't heard from her yet, so no promises! Let me know if you begrudge me my benefits, feel I should do Jane a solid after eliminating my solids, or if your own waste matter has been criticised. Strict Julie tells me her piss is sweet smelling and that her husband says it tastes sweet too, I say she can't convince me for a second that she hasn't drunk at least a little of it herself. Probably unprompted, probably in private. Was that a rude thing to say? I don't seem able to tell these days!
Peace!
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Fred!
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Glad you are back in the saddle. I missed your tangled musings!
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to have something worth saying! Expect another check-in the next hour or so, and my adventures with Stinky Lips in the next couple of days, if you can stomach it!
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