The Law is an Ass !

Let me paint a picture for you with words. A scenario which you can contemplate and then decide how you would react in such circumstances.
Imagine you a woman in early middle age. You live on your own in a nice little one bedroom flat and spend your time watching TV, imbibing the odd bottle of booze and of course smoking the occasional substance which the government feels we are not qualified to decide whether or not we want to use it.
In other words there is nothing spectacular about her life. She doesn't work because she suffers from a catalogue of mental health issues: PTSD, schizophrenia, OCD, and clinical depression. These in themselves are somewhat debilitating. But the real issue is caused by the medication that she has to take. This consists of a plethora of psycho-tropic drugs which combined turn her into a semi-comatose barely functioning person. This is sad because her normal personality is that of a bubbly outgoing person, full of mischief and laughter.
Anyway, as a consequence of her copious drug intake she tends to live her life adhering to a routing which hasn't changed in many years.
For the past three years she has lived in the little flat described above. In that time things have been quiet. There have been no issues with neighbours or locals. She keeps herself to herself and bothers nobody.
This was until approximately three months ago. Then, one of the downstairs neighbours moved out. A new tennent moved in. He seemed okay, was aged about forty or so and seemed quiet and desiring only of being left alone. But, he then moved out and sub-let the flat to a young man. This character is, for want of a better word, a 'fuckwit !' He has the IQ of a hen. For some bizarre reason seems to think he is some kind of a tough guy (He weighs about 140 lbs dripping wet and is all of five foot five !) despite this though he seems determined to cause as much trouble as possible. First of all he started playing music at 6am ! Next he started screaming abuse up the stairs to the lady I described earlier.
She thought this was bad but it was only the start of her problems. In the space of three weeks she was burgled three times ! The last time they stole her brand new flat screen television. This was disheartening for her to say the least. Next thing somebody began a campaign of systematically smashing her windows. Over the course of about a week she would have windows smashed every night.
 This went on until one night while she was in her living room watching television when she heard the smashing of glass. She went into her bedroom - which is at the front of her flat, looked out the window and there, bold as brass stood a young thug casually picking up rocks and throwing them at her windows. She screamed at him to stop. But all he did was reply, "Fuck off or I'll pour petrol through your letter box." This was the final straw for her. She dashed out of the flat after him. shouting, "Come here you little shit I'll kill you." Unfortunately somebody overheard her shout this and called the police. Two officers turned up and approached her saying, "Drop the knife love or we will taser you" This came as a surprise to her. She looked down and only then did she realize that she was carrying an eight inch bread knife ! She immediately dropped it, but nevertheless the police arrested her, even though the bloke who had been smashing her windows was only a few feet away laughing at her.
 She was taken to a police station and charged with carrying an offensive weapon and threats to kill ! She is in court this Wednesday. The police are aware of the intimidation she has endured. They are also aware of the burglaries and the window smashing. Despite all of this they are determined to prosecute her. She has never been in a police station in her life prior to this occurrence. And with her mental health issues it is clearly ridiculous of the police to continue with a prosecution. But that is the nature of Britain in the twenty first century. What will happen to her I honestly don't know. By all that is right and just she should merely be offered more help and support. But, in the current state of the country I just don't know. With the present government anything could happen. I'm disgusted by this occurrence and can only accompany her to court and offer any support I can. She is absolutely terrified. This is what makes me most angry. A vulnerable person who needs help is being put through a process which can only aggravate the symptoms of her schizophrenia with the stress and anxiety. Justice huh ? I shit it !  

Caring or not caring about how much I care about being a carer

Ah the joys of being a carer. Since the untimely death of my brother in January (I cannot believe just how much I miss him) I am to all intents and purposes a carer for my 80+ year old mother.
 This consists of sorting out her medication, both morning and evening. Likewise with her meals, and generally just being there in case she needs some assistance throughout the day. It is, I must stress, an extremely taxing job.  There is nothing specific I can put my finger on and say, "This is extremely difficult and I would prefer not to have to do it." The truth is that the whole thing sort of wears one down in a kind of cumulative way.
 I don't begrudge being her carer. After all, somebody has to do it, so I suppose it might as well be me as anyone. The problem is that I'm parted from my Jenny. This is absolute torment. I find every day that we are apart sheer purgatory ! Jenny is exactly the same. Worst of all, to complicate matters, my mother has decided that she has some issue with Jenny, and we cannot figure out exactly what her problem is. Subsequently, Jenny is reluctant to stay here with me. This means that I get to see even less of her then I used to. It is literally driving me crazy ! Why do the elderly become so awkward ?
 Things can't continue as they are. Jenny is my partner and we are used to being together 100% of the time. To suddenly split us up and try and tell us that we cannot spend time together when we want to is absolute torture ! I can't continue to function without the support and presence of my Jenny. She is a pain in the butt. She drives me nuts, and I often rue the day I met her, but not for long because she is MY Jenny and she has been by my side now for so long that I can't imagine being without her.
 Thus, the long and the short of it is this: my mother will have to learn to accept my Jenny as being a part of me. Otherwise this is just not going to work out for much longer. I need her. Without Jenny I am a nervous wreck. I am unable to function properly. I never knew that I could love somebody to such a degree. But I do and in doing so I've come to realize that she is as much a part of me as my right arm. I have to have her with me. And by hook or by crook she will be with me !

Mortality - reflections upon a death

It's about three weeks since my brother died. Initially I could not absorb the fact that he was dead. It was all so sudden, such a shock and a rude interruption breaking upon the ennui of my daily existence.
 The fact that I was there when he died and I witnessed it has thrown me more than I ever thought possible. One minute I was Lying in bed, the next I was running downstairs and picking him up after he had fallen down a flight of stairs backwards. As I tended to him he stopped breathing. This was literally as I was phoning the ambulance. Artificial respiration failed to revive him, my feeble efforts achieved nothing and the ambulance crews worked on him for over an hour; all in vain.
The greatest shock has been the realisation of the frailty of life. We all think we're aware of it and in a way we are. But, we don't really appreciate it in our gut so to speak. There is a term used by the hero of Robert Heinlein's book 'Stranger in a strange land' the term is 'grok'. It means to understand on a fundamental level. To comprehend as an intellectual and an affective concept. I suppose it is perception at both the essential and existential level. This is what has changed for me. I now 'grok' the all pervasive presence of death among us, taking place at every moment of every day all around us. While we are usually oblivious to it the reality remains as a central fact of life.
I've witnessed death before.I used to work on the County Rescue inshore rescue boat based at the Pier Head on the River Mersey. This has always been a magnet for the disturbed, the desperate, and those either seeking to make a desperate cry for help or to end their lives. Subsequently throughout my time there I witnessed the death of several individuals, as well as retrieving Lord knows how many bodies from the river of those who had drowned themselves in the river. But none of these deaths affected me on a fundamental level. Even when there was one instance where I had to work on an elderly lady and revive her, in the process breaking two of her ribs, this was very emotive. I saw her taken off to hospital by ambulance and only later on discovered that she had died en route to the hospital despite all of my and the other rescue workers efforts. I thought that had hit me hard. Events of the previous weeks have taught me I was wrong.
The death of my brother has brought home to me mortality in a way that my father's death did not. This isn't to say I didn't mourn my father. His death affected me deeply. But my brother's death, a death which I cannot help but feel was before his time has left me both in the depths of grief, though I doubt it has truly struck me yet, but it has left me with such feelings of insecurity about everything that I assumed to be true that I'm starting to feel everything I believed to be a sham and that I need to literally return to basics with regard to my feelings on life, death and any associated meaning I personally attached to either.

Lacking problems can be problematic

Ever since I began the seemingly endless process of therapeutic interventions into my life I always felt somewhat hindered by a bizarre handicap. The fact was that I didn't have any readily apparent problems. Everyone else I came into contact seemed to have long histories of abuse and spells in care homes followed by prison, deprivation, misery, doom and gloom. Whereas I had lived a seemingly utopian life, compared to others, during which I was not routinely beaten or abused or degraded, or any of the million and one other terrible awful things that seemed to be at the root of my fellow clients, or if I was in residential treatment, my housemates.
 This, I felt put me at somewhat of a disadvantage. Whenever there were encounter groups or general therapeutic sessions and somebody was asked to justify some errant characteristic of their personality or some idiosyncrasy that the staff team felt was causing the resident problems in his or her life which could be a contributor to their drug use.
 The only things I could come up with were a sort of suspicion that I didn't like my father very much and that this led to feelings of conflict and guilt. Of course in reality this was utter bollocks. The only issue I had with my father was he never told me he loved me as far back as I can remember. Of course all this was indicative of was the generation my father grew up in. They weren't demonstrative like we are these days. In fact I personally think that there is too much of this 'heart on our sleeves' nonsense.
 Anyway, I had to sort of manufacture some angst simply to appease the staff team of Phoenix House on the Wirral. This, I have to admit, did bother me at times because I was constantly hearing tales of people who used drugs because they had been systematically abused since they were literally babies in some cases. Others seemed to take a perverse delight in 'sharing' these tales of woe. So many of these occurred and they did begin to sound formulaic in their telling that my suspicions became aroused. I mean some of the things I heard described quite simply could not have been perpetrated without causing severe trauma requiring hospitalization of the child in question. The kid certainly could not have simply carried on, bruised, battered but stoically enduring. No bloody way !
 The staff team seemed oblivious to this. Residents would come out with the most bizarre and disturbing stories citing parents,schools, local authority care homes as the instigators of systematic abuse, physical -sexual and beatings, psychological  too. Though as I said earlier many of these things seemed trite, hackneyed and owed much to tabloid stories which just about anyone with a literacy age of about twelve (which is the age that tabloids are aimed at apparently. Don't ask how I know that, I probably read it ni a tabloid newspaper).
 Life at the rehabilitation centre focused around work and therapy sessions.The work came in several forms. There was daily housework which all residents did and involved hoovering, dusting, brushing, wiping down, moping bathroom floors and scrubbing toilets; you name it. The other work was assigned on a departmental basis. For instance if you were assigned to the gardens department you were, in theory, responsible for the maintenance of the grounds, which were extensive to say the least. The reality of gardening was standing around outside smoking cigarettes. It was winter most of the time I was there so this involved freezing one's ass off ! The one thing we didn't do was work. Inevitably the conversation would revolve around drugs and drug use. War stories were always high on the list. "One time I banged up three Diconal together" or other equally unlikely anecdotes. There was a maintenance department of sorts too. Things were basically the same if you were assigned to there as at gardens. They were supposed to maintain the buildings but of course the requisite skills would usually be lacking. Or, if indeed there was a resident who was, for example, a joiner, they would usually feel too wretched with withdrawals to do anything. except pace around and complain.
 Complaining is a vital component of rehab. From the moment one arrives in the community it begins. "I can't eat this food" or "I cannot get by on this much Methadone" when they knew weeks prior to attending the exact amount they would be given. When I did rehab they used to combine people who were there voluntarily and those who were only there under a court order. The fact that this was a recipe for disaster didn't seem to dawn on anyone at the time. The prisons were happy because it kept their numbers down. The probation services were happy as it meant that these troublesome clients were out of their hair for a while. Lastly, the rehabs were happy cause it guaranteed a steady stream of clients at roughly £1500 per week; and this was back in the early nineties when 1500 quid had a lot more buying power.
 Now being sent to a rehab might have seemed the soft option to them when they were in court and looking at some gaol time. But when they eventually got to the rehabs and realized that they would probably be in the rehab much longer than the gaol sentence they would have received. Also, when they were made aware that failing to complete the programme could, and almost certainly would result in their being sent back to gaol and having to do the original sentence - from the start ! Understandably, this tended to piss them off; a lot !!
  So, they would complain about everything. When they realized they would be drug tested randomly at any time and a failure would involve being thrown off the programme and subsequently, "Do not pass go etc..." This would make them even more unhappy and cause them to complain even more. IN the therapy sessions they would basically call anyone who started to reveal their life history a 'candy ass' or a 'pussy' or any other derogatory name they could think off. This would result in friction and inevitably people getting 'pull ups'
 Now pull ups were a system of telling tales. It was grassing but in a 'therapeutic sense.' The rationale ran thus: throughout our lives we do things which affect other people. The way our actions impact on others in turn causes the way they act or react to us. Now the 'pull up' system was a therapeutic tool which enabled us to receive feedback about the way our actions impacted on others and subsequently upon ourselves. If we did something in the rehab which upset somebody they would write a 'pull up' describing the event, the place, and the time and lastly, but most importantly, how this action of ours made the other person feel. This information could and would be fed back to us in a safe environment known as an encounter group.
 Groups usually took place twice a week. People were given back the pull up slips they had written about others and then the group would work their way through the 'pull ups'. A person would read out the 'pull up' slip, reminding the person when and where it took place and how it had made the offended person feel. Of course this would lead to heated debate more often than not. At times a pull up could bounce back on the person who wrote it. The rest of the community would decide that it wasn't valid and the 'pull up' had been malicious. Encounter groups could be very frightening. If someone or some group of residents had been involved in some mischief they would be well aware that they would have to justify their actions in the encounter group.
 More often than not it would be in the encounter groups that some of the tales of abuse and family strife that I've mentioned would come out. there is a funny thing about such groups. Often people would come out with such tales as justification of their actions. Not directly, but in a kind of, "I've always been like that because I've had to be because....." The funny thing is that you cannot fool the group. I think they call it 'the wisdom of crowds' or something. Quite simply though, you cannot pull the wool over the eyes of a large group of people. An average encounter group in Phoenix House Wirral back in the early nineties would consist of about 30 to 40 people. This would include staff members too, but anyone trying to wriggle out of a situation by playing the sympathy card would often have it blow up in their faces. "Okay bad shit happened to you in your life but that does not justify you acting equally bad to others. In fact, you should know better than most how awful being on the receiving end of such stuff is." This would be a typical group response. I hated encounter groups. They terrified me. But at the same time I learnt more about myself in those groups then in, up until then, about 30 years of living !
 It was in an encounter group that I finally understood why I could be included among the people in the rehab community who had been through major traumatic issues in their lives. It was explained to me in a metaphor. I thought at the time it was fantastic and have never forgotten it. Imagine that as we are born we are all given an invisible wicker basket which we always carry on our backs. Now the purpose of this basket it to carry the emotional baggage we accrue throughout life. As we continue through our lives we all end up carrying a load in this basket. The majority of people acquire a fair old amount of emotional stuff. Imagine that it comes in the form of heavy or light stones, rock, pebbles, sand. Each of these represents an amount of emotional weight that we acquire and carry around with us. Now some unfortunates from an early age begin to fill their emotional baskets very quickly. Their mother may die or be unable for whatever reason to care for them. This would be represented by a fairly large rock of negative emotion going into the basket. They might go into care, be fostered but the foster parents feel unable to cope with them. So the rejection by the foster parents is another large rock of negative emotion that goes into the basket. Being in care they may be bullied - more stones of negativity go into the basket. Then the mother takes them back, she has a new man in her life and feels with his support she can cope. Overjoyed the child goes home or rather goes back to mum and her new partner. The man assaults the child - more stones of negativity go into the basket. The child doesn't tell their mother cause they are terrified of being separated from her again. But, they cannot help feeling in their young hearts that 'mum should know, mum should protect me' - more negativity goes into the basket.
 This pattern continues till adulthood. Drugs become a coping strategy. But they too lead to emotional upheaval and more weight of emotionally negative rocks going into the basket. Until the weight is too much to bear anymore and then they hit the floor, in desperate need of help.
 Then we come to my case. I too am born and get my emotional basket. I lead an average life secure in family. But as a child I was sickly. Back then it was felt best to hospitalize the child and isolate him from others. I had what is called 'strida' My windpipe went narrow where it should have went wider. Susceptable to bronchitis I was constantly ill. I had pneumonia several times. I was parted from my mother for months on end. All this for a toddler constituted small stones and grains of sand like emotional baggage into the basket. Later on I was nearly diagnosed as autistic. I had spent so much time in oxygen tents separated from human contact. It was felt that was the safest thing for a child with my illness' back then. I withdrew into a shell. I would not allow physical contact. I used to hide behind the sofa with a blanket (like the kid out of the Charlie Brown Cartoons). I'd have it over my head hiding from the world and picking at the wool of the blanket. It was so close that I was nearly institutionalised. It was a district nurse who saved me. She taught my mum to hold me all the time and to ignore my efforts to avoid being held. It worked but an awful lot of those rocks must have gone into that kids basket.
 As I grew older I wasn't strong enough to be sporty. I lived in North Liverpool and was named Nigel and was a weedy kid. Constantly I was mocked, teased, and bullied at times; more emotional baggage. To cut a long story short I grew up an adult. In my life there were rejections and failures and my letting people down and guilt over drug use and feelings of being a failure. The list goes on and on. In the end I had such a weight of emotional negativity in my basket that I couldn't stand the weight and I collapsed.
 You see the other guy or girl had a ton of emotional negativity in his/her basket in the form of large rocks and boulders from major crises or trauma in their lives. But I had a ton of negativity in my basket in the form of pebbles, some largish stones, and an awful lot of sand too. But, and it is the crucial 'but' we both had a ton in our emotional baskets that we could no longer carry. It's like the old joke, which is heaviest - a ton of lead or a ton of feathers ? Of course neither is the answer, they weigh exactly the same. And that is the crux of the matter. It doesn't matter how you got flat on your back unable to get up without help. What matters is that you're there and have asked for the help. The rest is up to you.
 I didn't finish the programme at that rehab. After eight months I was thrown out for slamming a door ! I kid you not. I, with a group of my peers had been out of the community at a local baths. I'd reached the stage in my rehabilitation where I was starting my reintegration into the community. While I and the group I was with, who were all at the same stage of the programme I was at, were out there was an encounter group held for the other residents. We were at the stage of our programmes where we were beyond attending them. Anyway, there was violence in the group. This was unheard of. But unheard of or not it had happened. When I and my peers returned for lunch we were taken into a room by one of the senior staff. Then  we were told it was our fault ! We weren't even fucking there but it was our fault. We had no knowledge or foreknowledge of what it was all about, but ti was our fault. When we protested our innocence we were told we were back sliding, showing signs of relapse type behaviours by our denials. I told him he was talking utter nonsense. I said we were not responsible and it was obvious the staff on duty were looking for a 'patsy.' This really incensed the staff member and he said that he wasn't blaming all of 'Interphase' - the name of the stage of the programme I was at, no he was blaming Nigel because it was obvious from my denials that I was in denial. Now this is the catch all, "catch 22" of rehab speak. If they say, "You're in denial" and you deny this then they just come back with, "There you go, you've just done it again." Now I knew this member of staff didn't really like me. He wasn't comfortable with me because I was better educated than him, more intelligent than him, and I was more familiar with psychological issues and the theory behind the therapy process practised in Phoenix House. This isn't arrogance on my part, it's simply a statement of fact.
 Realizing I would get nowhere with him when he was adopting this attitude I said, "I'm going to my room." As I walked out the door shut loudly behind me. But I never intentionally slammed it I walked up to my room and wasn't in there five minutes when he came into the room and told me to pack as I was leaving.
 So, after eight months I left for no reason but the very human frailty which the rehabilitation centre was set up to address. Ironically it wasn't my frailty but this staff members. On reflection I think he wanted me out before the bosses came in and demanded explanations. He knew if I was there I could put a valid case (which wouldn't be too difficult as it was true) for my being in no way responsible for events which had taken place when I wasn't even on the property. No, better to get rid of me and then he could make up whatever tale suited which made sure he wasn't in the frame.
 I relapsed later on that day. I held onto a lot of bitterness for Phoenix house as a whole for many years. Once at a presentation in front of representatives of the commissioning partners given by the then head of Phoenix House Wirral I tore into the guy at the end of his power point presentation when he asked, "Any questions ?" I really gave him a hard time. Later on at lunch he sought me out and asked me about my obvious issues with his organization. I explained what had occurred. He apologised and he most certainly wasn't responsible for those events either.
 Today I bear no animosity towards Phoenix Futures. It would be petty and ridiculous after all this time to bear ill will when probably nobody who worked there then is part of the current organization and even if they are so what ? Life is too short. Besides I owe Phoenix for at least one thing, they emptied a basket for me !

Hospital adventures in a workers pradise

Nearly six months ago my mother, who is now eighty one years old, suffered a stroke. This in itself was bad enough. It was a haemorrhagic stroke meaning she had actually bled into her brain and there was obvious damage. But subsequent to this there was further problems caused by her actual treatment !
Prior to her stroke she had suffered problems with her throat for several years. She was referred to a specialist who told her that one of her vocal cords (apparently you have two) was paralysed. This meant that her speech was often not much more than a whisper, also, she often suffered from sore throats and coughing fits.
Then, about a year ago she was diagnosed with a problem in her middle ear which affects balance. She wasn't long out of hospital after a fall which lead to her breaking her hip when she was diagnosed with the balance problem. So, overall, it lead to her losing confidence and not going out hardly ever.
The stroke she suffered affected her ability to swallow so it decided to do an examination with a camera down her throat. In the process of attempting this the surgeon tore her gullet ! This was just about the worst thing that could have happened. All the hospital could do was place her on antibiotics and pray that she never developed an infection and that the tear would heal itself. She was very lucky. The wound was closed within five days, although complete healing would take much longer.
However, the occurrence of the tear had lead to a dilemma. She could now no longer be fed through a tube inserted via her nose. Therefore the only option was to fit a PEG. This is a tube inserted directly into the stomach through which high nutrition food mixtures can be pumped providing all the nutritional needs of the patient. As this was the only realistic option available to mum they went ahead with the operation.
But, as always, there was a complication. Normally, such procedures require a camera to be fed down the throat to guide the surgeon. But as this wasn't possible with my mum after the tear they had to go in blind so to speak. In doing so they accidentally tore an artery !
Again, the worst had happened. In order to stop the bleeding they had to feed a device in through her thigh and all the way up to her stomach wall. Luckily the 'fix' worked. Nevertheless she had to go onto critical care for two days and things seemed very grim for a while.
Eventually she recovered from this mess up too. Unfortunately all these complications interfered with her ongoing rehabilitation. Whereas she should have been having physio and occupational therapy sessions regularly, not to mention sessions with the speech and language team, and psychologists. Instead she was stuck in bed due to the dammed operation mess.More weeks in hospital followed. Eventually we were told that she would be getting discharged. Of course we were absolutely thrilled at this news. My mum was ecstatic at the thought of getting home.
Two nights before her planned discharge she woke in the middle of the night. She need the toilet so pressed the button for a nurse to come and help her. Nobody came. She kept on pressing the button for over half an hour. In the end, in desperation she got out of bed and tried to go herself. She slipped ! The fall resulted in a hairline fracture of her hip. This meant that going home in two days was out of the question. Mum was decimated. We were totally despondent but had to put a brave face on things for mum's sake. The fall led to a delay of over a month before she eventually came home. I've never felt such ambivalent emotions over a public service. The NHS saved my mother's life, The devotion, compassion and level of care provided by the majority of the staff on the Stroke Unit is beyond reproach. However, at the same time, several mistakes contributed to the fact that my mother's hospital stay was more than twice as long as it should have been. Thus there is a weird combination of eternal gratitude and outrage at mistakes which medical students and trainee nurses would have been disciplined severely for making.
 I guess when all is said and done my mum is home. She has survived a stroke, a haemorrhagic stroke - the worst kind to have (statistics are basically that for stroke victims: 1 out of 3 will not survive, 1 out of three will be disabled severely and 1 out of 3 will recover). So, all things considered to say she has been lucky would be the wrong word. But it is a harsh fact of life that things could have been a lot worse for her. The fact my mum is till with us despite everything is such a boon for me that words fail me when it comes to describing how I am left feeling after the events of the past months.