#2: Life Goes On

After they'd both been released from hospital they returned to their council flat and a live-in carer was duly installed.  Apparently this is cheaper than housing them in council-funded homes.  Of course, this meant that the assistance provided (at a huge financial cost to us) by the neighbours ceased which was beneficial in so many ways - the main one being that they were no longer able to 'seasonally re-adjust' the various benefits they collected from the post office and best of all, I no longer had to suffer endless monotonous phone calls about what was going on from one of them.  Hurrah.

Since then, my poor husband has had to co-ordinate this nightmare on an almost daily basis; he used to look young for his age but he's visibly wilted during the past year.  He visits once a week or fortnight as necessary but in the meantime he deals with their every problem or whim via phone.  Here's a few examples of what he's had to put up with during the past few months:

• Sorting out things as mundane as having my BIL's hair cut
• Contacting the council to complain about the noise a neighbouring flat is emitting during to extensive internal refurbishment
• Buying new clothes for my MIL which she always declares as 'crap' - including the purchase 'brassieres' although she's not sure which size she is
• Buying new clothes for my BIL (from BHS btw!) which my MIL then won't let him wear....
• Contacting the white goods repair team after my BIL left the freezer door wide open for ages

Poor old him!  As for me, well she's scared of me apparently and doesn't vex me unduly.  I do receive odd phone calls from her though as she truly believes that because my voice is on the answerphone message that she's directly addressing me.  When I've argued with her I've had the phone slammed down on me on numerous occasions.

#1: Background

Yes, yet another blog, but writing is cathartic to me, so bear with it. 

OK, so here's the score - I am a woman in her late 30s (at time of writing), my husband's a fair whack older than me.  We're the parents of a six-year-old autistic boy and to cap it all, my husband has a mentally and physically disabled brother who's in his 50s plus an increasingly senile and housebound mother, aged in her late 80s.  My mother-in-law or MIL thereafter, has always looked after my brother-in-law (BIL), but it's not good - my father-in-law (FIL) was a bit of a drunkard and the pair of them did bugger all to improve my BIL's life, provide any useful skills or education post-18, so he's basically useless, sorry but that's the God honest truth - my son has more savvy about him than the former has.  I don't believe that he can even wipe his own arse or bath himself; no he can't.

This situation jogged along for a good many years through illnesses (Bell's Palsy for him) and various other stages of semi-neglect?  You're shocked aren't you, but there wasn't much we could do about it, the local Social Services don't really step in unless it's a life and death case and short of actually banging one's head against the doors of the council offices, it's fairly pointless.  She broke her wrist in 2005ish and we stepped in then and arranged care and Meals on Wheels which she described and I quote, as 'utter rubbish'.  Nice.

In August 2012 I received a phone call at home, one of MIL's distant nieces twice-removed or whatever the equivalent is, reported that she'd slipped on some orange peel and was conveyed to hospital.  It turned out that she had a broken femur and as a result developed MRSA and stayed in hospital for a great many weeks.  Conversely we had to find care for my BIL via a series of Heath Robinsonesque rota of carers plus assistance from a triumvirate of rapacious neighbours.  This rumbled on for a few weeks until one of the carers took my physically disabled BIL for one walk too many and the latter developed Deep Vein Thrombosis and as a result ended up in the same hospital (albeit located on different floors) a my MIL.