Gemma Bailey

Posts Tagged ‘FTD’

I Punched a Wasp 🐝

Posted on: July 18th, 2018 by admin No Comments

And since the last time we corresponded…

You thought I’d been relaxing didn’t you? 🤭

I’m going to slap you with an imaginary wet salmon around your head for thinking that🐟. A big heavy one from Sainsbury Taste the Difference range, just for thinking it.

Clare had another round of seizures and emergency medication. No hospital thankfully, but it of course came within the same 24 hour period my Mum fell out of bed and hit her head. She’s now back under the hospital for having the balance of a new born baby giraffe.

I sold these oil lamps my Mum had that were pretty fancy, to go towards her care costs until her house sells (Every little helps – I know we switched from a Sainsbury slogan to a Tesco one but these care homes are fu*king expensive and soon I’ll be living off the mice my cat brings me. Either that or I’ll set up a ‘Go Fund My Mother’ fund raising page. Which sounds like a really nice way to tell people to ‘fuck off.’)

“Up yours!”
“Go Fund my Mother!”

Anyway, despite the lamps (having been sold whilst I was ‘on holiday(!)’) getting wrapped and labelled in a way that one might wrap a very unreliable hand grenade which has been sellotaped to your favourite kitten, somewhere along the lines the delivery company still managed to damage them in such that they look like they were dropped from an aeroplane into Whipsnade zoo’s elephant enclosure, where the elephants clumsily used them as bongs, got high, fell on them (because they were stoned) laughed their massive heads off and then personally delivered them to the poor eBay buyer, who now thinks I’m a con artist trying to sell dodgy antique oil lamps.
I’m not a con artist trying to sell dodgy lamps, I just got done over by a clumsy delivery driver and some elephants who have a drug problem.

So here’s where I’m at;

I am coming home tomorrow, probably in a lesser relaxed state than I was in when I left. But the really important thing to note is that yesterday I punched a wasp.

I mentioned it on facebook yesterday but I don’t think I got adequate praise for it so I’m mentioning it again. 🐝

*no animals were harmed in the creation of this post. Except the wasp but they don’t count because they’re basically the nazis of the insect world.

⏮What Yesterday Looked Like.⏮

Posted on: July 7th, 2018 by admin No Comments

Yesterday I took my dementing Mum to the Royal Free for her final appointment. It was a bit emotional really, because we said goodbye to a neurologist who got his head around her bizarre dementedness and agreed on a diagnosis I had flagged up almost 2 years earlier. He’d been super helpful and written a letter for me to send to the creditors when she got herself into a big financial pickle. But there’s no need to see him now, because there’s nothing that can be done for her. There’s no treatment or cure for FTD (used to be called Picks Disease) so it’s just a case of making the best of what you’ve got left.

On the way home, I got a call from an unrecognised mobile number. It was a lady saying she was from UK border control. She had stopped the house sitter who was due to stay at mine so I could head back to Bulgaria today. 😱

The house sitters are not paid. But they do have to look after my cat. Border control said this is payment (to them) as I let them stay at my house without charge. They were holding the house sitter on that basis.

When I got home I had a panic as I realised I’d just told someone all about my travel plans and actually had nothing to prove they were border control at all. They hadn’t validated who they were and had called from a mobile number. So I called the office at Luton and they tracked down the enforcement officer. All they’d tell me is that someone would call me back.

Two hours in and I got a message from the sitter, saying she was being held at border control but if I charged her (like air bnb) they would let her go. So I called them back and said I could do this. The enforcement officer said “but you don’t have Airbnb”
“Actually I do – I set it up before calling you back” (Cos I’m blonde but not stupid😉).
Pause
“Well….No.”

I also called the house sitting site I use, who arrange house sits all over the world and they said they’d never heard anything like it – and they should know!

Meanwhile I was scrambling to make other plans and at the 11th hour a couple who’s landlord decided to make a surprise renovation had been left without somewhere to live; got in touch. It took them another few hours to confirm if they could help and to check their references (and since they’re from the UK I don’t have an immigration issue!)

At 10:00pm the original house sitter got in touch again. She had been given a visa until the end of August but not until she’d been locked in room all day, searched, finger printed, and told that if she stayed at my house she would be arrested. She’s the same age as my Mum and now had no where to stay.

For the last 3 weeks since my Mum went into a home, I’ve been doing house clearance of her old house. It’s now empty. It does me no favours to have someone staying in it (in fact its slightly inconvenient) but I was hardly going to force this woman to stump up the money to stay in a hotel when she hadn’t anticipated her visit to the UK to look like that.

So the UK couple who have had a surprise temporary eviction are looking after my spoilt cat in my house.

The lady who has flown over to look after my cat is now doing me no favours what so ever, and is staying in my Mum’s old house. To be on the safe side, in case my border control officer friend reads this, I’m also charging her. £1. And writing her a receipt.

This afternoon I’m going to attempt to get on an aeroplane!!!

I sense there’s a strong possibility it will crash, be hijacked or land in the wrong country. I just wanted you to know know I can swim, negotiate and I know how to make a compass.

When it all goes fucked up, I can, independently figure out what to do. Even when the faces around me look blank and cannot help with ideas or practical solutions. It doesn’t matter because I will sort it out. Eventually. And sometimes, I’ll even sort things out for others along the way.

But it probably wouldn’t hurt at all if you wished me luck before I board my flight – just to be on the safe side 😆😉

When a Family Member Goes into Care

Posted on: June 10th, 2018 by admin No Comments

This is a bit of a random post for my blog but I felt it was too important to keep to myself….

➡️ Have you got a dementing one or did you have one until the past?⬅️

If so, I might have discovered something important. (Apologies if you already know about it – I literally just found this yesterday).

For the last 2 years I’ve been told by social service that when my mum needs care (she has FTD a rare kind of dementia), There would not be any financial assistance available to her because she owns her own house. The house would need to be sold to pay for her care costs, and only when her funds remaining had dropped below £24,000, she then could be eligible for financial assistance in paying for the care costs.

Whilst this is true of the help from social services, I’ve just discovered that there is funding available from the NHS. This works on the basis that her need for care isn’t based on old age, but is based on a health condition.

The fund available is called CHC, and it is not means tested. Which means that in making an application for this funding, any other savings, property or financial assistance that your loved one receives isn’t taken into consideration. It also isn’t limited to the care decision you make – meaning that you can still receive it even if you chose the best and most expensive care home available or if you offer care at their own home. You may get part or all of the costs covered.

What is considered is whether or not your loved one has a health condition which necessitates the care that they are receiving. Therefore if you have a relative who receives care, that you paid for, or that they paid for, due to them having dementia or Alzheimers – or any other health condition – then you could be eligible to claim back past payments or to receive financial assistance for any future ones.

I’m not sure if other people are familiar with this or not. I know that I wasn’t and only found out about it yesterday. My guess is, that lots of people miss out on this funding because as a society we have come to accept that dementia is part of old age. And that, if you have a loved one who develops it and has to get care, it’s just part of getting old. The truth is dementia isn’t part of getting old. Dementia is a disease and therefore it is a health condition which means that CHC funding should be available to them.

He is a link to the CHC application form and some more information about it.

https://www.continuing-healthcare.co.uk/do-i-have-to-pay-for-care-home-fees

I don’t yet know if my Mum’s application will be successful but it’s definitely worth a shot.