Midsummer madness...

In which there are calls for me to be sent to Rwanda...

AT convent school the nuns warned us sternly that God was always watching us...

But it seems God isn’t the only person currently taking an unseemly interest in events chez nous...

More than a year ago, following James’ diagnosis, I started a dementia diary, and more recently have shared it with other carers.

You have been uniformly kind about it, and your support has encouraged me to carry on - although it is a source of some considerable sadness to me that James, always so proud of anything I have written, cannot understand or appreciate the very many prayers, messages and good wishes that come his way each week when I update it.

But it seems Big Brother – or at least the Daily Mail – has also been trawling facebook because last weekend I was contacted about my recent difficulties in getting James out of hospital given the nationwide shortage of carer support packages.

As a former journalist myself I have always preferred to report the story than to be the story: but with more than one in seven hospital beds now ‘blocked’ by patients who need social rather than medical care, the NHS is once again in crisis.

And with the winter coming the situation is only likely to get worse...

So I agree to talk about our experience, which saw James confined to a hospital bed for three weeks after he was medically fit for discharge simply because no carers could be found to ease his transition back home.

In hospital, I very quickly realised that the offer of carers three times a day was pie in the sky, and said I would be happy to have someone once a day to help me get James washed and dressed.

But three times, or once, made no difference... James could not be discharged without a care package in place – and there were no carers...

So with no other option, I had him discharged to a local dementia unit, which left me almost three thousand pounds poorer but bought me the time to get a private carer in place at home.

Two days later the bed-blocking story makes the front page – and when I read it to James he agrees the couple featured do indeed look a lot like us.

And then, at 10am, the phone rings and it is BBC Radio 4 wanting to know if I will do an interview for World at One.

I have done live interviews in the past, in connection with my books, and they are necessarily nerve-racking affairs: but relieved that a pre-recorded interview is on offer, I say I will do it.

With so very many of the ‘bed blockers’ suffering, like James, from dementia, it is an issue very close to home and one which needs to be kept in the public eye.

At 11am a second call cancels the interview due to ‘scheduling issues’ but by noon it is back on - but now too late to edit a recording so would I do it live?

Such is the glamour of being a media rent-a-quote that as I take this last call I am supervising James on the loo, and hoping that any unseemly background noises aren’t readily identifiable.

And then he goes downstairs and sets off his falls alarm...

My nerves are screeching almost as loudly as the siren from his master unit when our kindly carer Judy comes to the rescue.

“I think,” she says laughing, “that I’d better stay on until you are finished...”

So I address the nation without further mishap and when I play it back to James he agrees it certainly sounds a lot like me...

Twenty-four hours later the story is picked up by BBC Radio Sussex, and by now a veteran of live broadcasting, I agree to talk to Sarah Gorrell: but recalling the fate of poor Professor Robert Kelly, whose live BBC broadcast was interrupted by the unscheduled arrival of both his children, and his wife, I ask a friend to sit with James until my ordeal-by-airwaves is over...

And I am just preparing to sink willingly back into the oblivion from which I had been so unexpectedly plucked when ITV Meridian calls...

So if you catch it, tonight, please know that just moments before the recording began, I was mopping up the contents of a leaking overnight catheter bag from the bedroom floor...

Show business isn’t always quite as glamorous as it seems...

* An odd footnote to the Daily Mail story was to be found in some of the ‘comments’ which suggested variously that over-seventies should either be put down, or sent to Rwanda.

These left me wondering at the paucity of imagination of posters who did not envisage one day becoming old and vulnerable themselves:  and at the realisation that they apparently have no older relatives of their own to love and be loved by...

Which is all a bit sad…