The Fall

She fell in the night, trying to get to the lavatory. To her credit, she remembered the button round her neck and used it ten or fifteen times, and the police came to the door in the early hours, but if she could hear them she could not move, and when they heard her alive they went away again rather than break down the door. She was lying in a pool of excrement and urine, trying to wake her man, who's hearing aids were switched off by his bedside. Mid morning a carer, with much effort, entered and found this frail 96year old man trying vainly to lift his wife to her feet.
So the bossy psychiatric nurse finally has her way, and the elderly lady is going to a home for several weeks for a psychiatric assessment, from people who became psychiatrists because they didn't really understand how people work, or for that matter, themselves. And they will come back with an assessment based on lists of question and answers, that will tell us exactly what we, and the amazing carers who wipe elderly bottoms for £8 an hour, knew all along. And the elderly gentleman has been taken to a care home, because he cannot function without her.
So to rest from the battle to meet their needs and leave them in other hands? They don't have their hearing aids. The house is locked, but they always had the heating set at 30 celsius, 24hours a day. They don't have wash bags, and hospitals don't wash patients clothing and they are 150 miles away and have no changes. The milk and papers and meals on wheels are cancelled.
And my lovely disabled son is coming home on Sunday, so I've given up giving a stuff for a few weeks, and the NHS and social services will just have to cope, and Mum and Dad too.