I’m already dreading the ‘how was your weekend?’ question at work.

‘I spent my weekend covered in shit. Being sprayed by it, and cleaning it up from every unlikely surface you can imagine.‘ Is the truthful answer, but I can’t say that so I’ll say ‘Fine, and yours?’ before we get down to whatever corporate matter we have to discuss.

Aside from the shit, I slept very little and barely ate. Also a standard for carers.

My awful weekend was payment for the fact I had spent two days in London for work at the beginning of the week and my grandma had been ‘looked after’ (I use the term loosely) by my father – her son. I came back on Tuesday night and noticed grandma was constipated and dehydrated, despite protests to the contrary. Laxatives over the subsequent days weren’t working so I decided to call 111 early on Saturday morning – I ignored the system’s repeated coaxing to get me to find information online and finally got through to a human who asked me all the same questions from the form I’d just filled out. They referred me to the out of hours doctor who would appear sometime later to confirm what I feared – fecal impaction. Not fun in general and *really* not fun when you’re 101. He wrote me a prescription for an enema and asked if I wanted a district nurse to come round and administer it. ‘Yes!‘ was my answer. I thought it was implied, I’ll go to the pharmacy and the medical professional can do the medical bit. I hadn’t taken into account the NHS’s drive to put the medical care responsibility on the patients themselves or their carers.

Prescription in hand, I went to my local pharmacy who told me they didn’t stock them. ‘You’re joking… I have a district nurse coming this afternoon.’

‘Sorry, try a bigger chain pharmacy.’

Three big chain pharmacies later, I still had no enema and was trying not to panic. I took to calling all the local pharmacies suggested by Google until I found one who stocked them. I got there just before they closed at 1. Some kerfuffle with their computer later and I rushed home with the enema.

Grandma was then violently sick and I spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for the nurse to come and tending to grandma. The phone rang to reconfirm I did, in fact, need a nurse because the doctor has only provided half a confirmation of what was needed and no patient information. I took a deep breath and insisted I needed a nurse to come as soon as possible and repeated the symptom list for the umpteenth time.

A few hours later, the district nurse showed up. She tried twice to have me administer the enema so she could ‘leave us to it’ but I insisted she do it ‘so I know what I’m doing if need be’. She ended up doing it and well… I’ll spare you the details. The nurse left very quickly and said to call the GP if I was worried, it took all my strength not to say: ‘I’m a carer, I’m always fucking worried!’

A long evening and night of old lady manoeuvring and endless cleaning followed. I wasn’t convinced it had worked but let grandma settle for the evening, she was exhausted and so was I but I stayed up all night to monitor her. She was still very nauseous and throwing up a lot, Google (not *any* of the medical professionals I’d spoken to that day) told me this wasn’t normal and potentially dangerous. So I called 111 again very early on Sunday morning, gamed the questionnaire to ensure they called an ambulance and spent the next 10 hours looking after and reassuring grandma while being slowly and inefficiently moved from triage ward, to A&E, to temporary same day care ward for the doctors to finally confirm my carer hunch and admit her overnight by late afternoon. Knowing how unorganised the system is I repeated to every nurse and doctor that came near us with a form the correct number to call to keep me informed before I got grandma settled into her ward for the night (with barrier cream applied to prevent bed sores) and left the ward exhausted and tearful. The young doctor who I’d been gently hounding all afternoon, and whose spirit hadn’t entirely been broken by the NHS yet, came over to hand me a leaflet on burnout as he’d found out I also work full time. How sweet, useless, but very sweet.

This is what it is like being a carer, you’re left largely on your own, expected to have medical knowledge and administer all the care with the system seemingly determined to make it as difficult as possible to get any help at all.

I write this exhausted and stressed out on a Sunday evening, already worried about what Monday will bring at work, with grandma and how I’ll be able to handle it all.