Adapting our apartment to Anne’s disability: The Great Escape revisited
Have you ever seen the film The Great Escape?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape_(film)
The 1963 epic film depicts a heavily fictionalized version of the mass escape by British Commonwealth prisoners of war from German POW camp Stalag Luft III in World War II.
Our apartment is currently being adapted for an ongoing “Great Escape”, enabling my wife Anne, a victim of brain cancer, to remain on the lam from the hospital and to live at home.
To facilitate her escape, our apartment has had to be thoroughly adapted from top to bottom through the installation of all manner of devices, including a commode (“c’est pas commode”); a shower contraption for perching during personal hygiene operations; a vast collection of cleaning and sterilizing equipment; a large set of adult diapers, ordered from Jeff Bezos and euphemistically known as briefs; and so much more besides.
We have received several visits from organizations such as St. Elizabeth’s Home Care and Ontario Health at Home.
Our bathroom is quite far from our bedroom and up until now, incontinence, not Britannia, had ruled Anne’s urinary waves.
Anne and I imagined a little mobile cart with a pulley, with which I could ferry her to the bathroom after she tapped on the wheels twice with a trawl, like the claustrophobic Charles Bronson in the tunnels of the Great Escape.
Instead we now have an adapted bathroom “throne” right in our bedroom.
Yesterday, a delightful nurse arrived with a 60-page binder for our perusal called “The Chart in the Home.” He did a complete survey of Anne’s condition.
She had to complete and sign a sheet herself, on which she answered 5/10 for each listed condition: pain, anxiety, shortness of breath, nausea, comfort, fatigue, and all the rest.
Then she printed Anne McBryde on the document and kissed the young nurse on both cheeks.
She also offered him a flower from the blooming collection that adorns our tiny home.
Your friend,
Robert
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/
