Power Mannequins

I have been complaining about the robbing of Ellas rights as a human being, and a free citizen, enshrined in the Mental Capacity Act, which the Hardie report says is not being implemented. The alleged grounds for her care home “detention” or imprisonment was that she would be better looked after, there. Even that is false. I am sorry if the following account of Ellas sufferings is tiresome. It is much more tiresome to Ella! So much so, that I’m driven to explain how Ellas basic physical needs are not being met. In her 1 August phone call, Ella herself realises, and wants to be away, because things are only going to get worse for her, as winter approaches, in the care home.
She says this isn’t what she worked all her life for, to sit all day, with a blanket over her legs. She complains that her feet are “like ice”, or like “heavy lead”. She has to constantly and tiredly work them up and down, and still can’t get them warm. She suffers from swollen legs.
For years, I kept my mother supplied with hot water bottles, to keep her warm, and ease the pain of arthritis in her hips and joints. (They are not allowed in institutions.)
Ella is a pneumonia-history patient. She almost died of it, as a child, and the doctor said she will always feel the cold. When she was about 30, her husband saved her life by swaddling her in blankets up to her nostrils.
Since her institutionalisation, Ella has constantly complained about the cold, because she is abnormally prone to feeling it. T
Ella is “stuck” in a big draughty lounge. Both sets of doors have to be kept open, to let the air circulate. Even then, she is barraged by chronic bouts of coughing and sneezing, from other residents. As she told me, that’s the worst about being among a lot of people, you catch all their illnesses.
Since being institutionalised, Ella has been kept daily on various pills, no doubt, to calm her restless antagonism to her deprivation of liberty.
It is a Brave New World medication to fit the individual to an institution, instead of the individual choosing where and with who to live.
Ella is extremely sensitive to the cold. Her north facing care home bedroom is too cold for comfort. It is not sustainable for her, in winter.
We had that problem at home. The living room is north facing. I assembled a cosy bed for her, in the corner. But it was too cold a spot for her. So, I’ve had installed an insulated bay window, to get rid of the drafts, so she can move into the sunny south-facing dining room.
We also had the wrong sort of heating, as does the care home bedroom. Thermostat heating tends to blast out heat, and then turn chilly. It doesn’t continually warm the air, which, Ella told me, is what she needs. I’ve had central heating installed, at home, so a room in winter was like a mild summers day.
A Best Interest meeting prided itself, in getting Ella off a purée diet. But this is what she needs. (It takes a speech therapy committee to allow her back on it! It’s like Imperialist or Communist micro-management.) The result was, two days later, on 8 february 2020, Ella had to be rushed to hospital for emergency surgery of a prolapse, with much loss of blood.
Nothing was learned. Ella was still fed randomly from the food trolley.
(The best interest meeting, aggrandising the care home over our dwelling, reminds of communist propaganda to bolster their low quality of life. The care home is communal catering. Ella is an individual, whose individual needs cannot be properly known, let alone met, in a mass care environment.)
Ella told me she couldn’t eat hard foods. I had bought a heavy duty blender (JR Ultra) so both of us, old people with weak and worn and damaged teeth, could get the nutrients from broken-down foods.

As I’ve said before, there are some fine people at the care home, who do a difficult job. As I have told a few of them (the bottom line), mother and son want to be back home together.
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