My father was discharged from hospital with a plastic bag containing 13 boxes of pills and a vague promise that a nurse would turn up at his house to help him. ‘He’ll have a package of care put in place,’ yawned a hospital functionary, who didn’t sound at all interested.
But after he got home, the only package was the big bag of pills that sat on the kitchen table and a sheet with thousands of words in very small print detailing the complicated doses, which my father, who can’t see properly, was attempting to read with a magnifying glass when I arrived from Ireland. I had no more luck than him, even with my reading glasses on.
I rang one of the many numbers I had accumulated when he was in hospital, and heaven knows who got back to me because all these people sound the same. They speak in state-ese and talk mostly about themselves. This one gave me a long explanation of the care system, which was so geared towards providing things when it was too late that it made me feel like self-harming. In fact I did self-harm, because I went out to the car to get a vape to suck on in desperation and fell over a plant pot, flat on my face.
In the end, my mother’s private carer reported the predicament we were in back to her bosses and the care company devised a plan whereby she could help with my father’s meds by making it into a joint contract.
After a couple of days of that arrangement, there was a ring at the door and a large, stern-faced woman came in, sat down and started interviewing my father, who was slumped in a chair.
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