Margaret Mccal's Day-To-Day Care Study
Full time carer Margaret McCall talks about her day-to-day struggles with caring for her disabled son.
“Normally I get up at 6am, shower, take my tablets and make a cuppa. I get my son David up at 6:45am and get him out of bed. I then wash him before taking him back to his room, laying him on the bed and changing his pads. Then I dress him and put him into his wheelchair. I give him his breakfast and his medication then I take him into the living room and put his trainers on and wait for the van to take him to the day centre.
This all takes a couple of hours to get David ready. The van picks David up between 8:30am and 9:30am to go to the centre where they take him bowling, and out for bar lunches.
He’s in the craft centre and makes a lot of things. He goes into the sensory room at the centre where he has a giant beanbag. They take him out of his wheelchair and lie him down on the beanbag to relax him. David’s at the centre all day until the van drops him off between 3:45pm and 4:30pm, and then it’s dinnertime. When David isn’t at the centre, we spend the day watching TV. He loves when we have company.
David’s dinnertime is different to my dinnertime. I might have fish and chips but David …show more content…
I have to stay up with him, which could be an hour or two hours. Sometimes I’m up for the rest of the night with him as David can’t relax and go back to sleep. I suffer from lack of sleep, I’m fed up, I could punch him but I don’t, of course. His seizures could happen everyday for a week then they might stop. They could stop for two or three months and then come back again. At the moment, he’s having seizures during the night so I’ve been up since 4:20am today because David couldn’t get back to sleep. I’ve got to keep reassuring him by holding his hand until he answers me. If I ask him “are you feeling better, are you ready?” he’ll answer me and say “yes” and that means he’s out of his
“Normally I get up at 6am, shower, take my tablets and make a cuppa. I get my son David up at 6:45am and get him out of bed. I then wash him before taking him back to his room, laying him on the bed and changing his pads. Then I dress him and put him into his wheelchair. I give him his breakfast and his medication then I take him into the living room and put his trainers on and wait for the van to take him to the day centre.
This all takes a couple of hours to get David ready. The van picks David up between 8:30am and 9:30am to go to the centre where they take him bowling, and out for bar lunches.
He’s in the craft centre and makes a lot of things. He goes into the sensory room at the centre where he has a giant beanbag. They take him out of his wheelchair and lie him down on the beanbag to relax him. David’s at the centre all day until the van drops him off between 3:45pm and 4:30pm, and then it’s dinnertime. When David isn’t at the centre, we spend the day watching TV. He loves when we have company.
David’s dinnertime is different to my dinnertime. I might have fish and chips but David …show more content…
I have to stay up with him, which could be an hour or two hours. Sometimes I’m up for the rest of the night with him as David can’t relax and go back to sleep. I suffer from lack of sleep, I’m fed up, I could punch him but I don’t, of course. His seizures could happen everyday for a week then they might stop. They could stop for two or three months and then come back again. At the moment, he’s having seizures during the night so I’ve been up since 4:20am today because David couldn’t get back to sleep. I’ve got to keep reassuring him by holding his hand until he answers me. If I ask him “are you feeling better, are you ready?” he’ll answer me and say “yes” and that means he’s out of his