Distance caring and dihorrea.

[randomphantoms]

Hope you weren't eating when you read that!

The long distance relative began complaining of bouts of dihorrea about the same time as my brain injury.

It may sound selfish but every ounce of my energy was consumed with trying to get better.

When I finally did get some spare ability and a chance to visit I read the riot act about eating out of date food.

It didn't solve the problem.

Any number of things were tried and nothing worked.

It was a visit earlier this year when I was able to choose a job.............I decided to clean the washing machine seals.

Suddenly it all made sense.

The relative was too mortified to let anyone else know so would strip and wash all the bedding. Unfortunately being money conscious they were not boil washing and limited mobility meant that the seals weren't being cleaned regularly. Enough said.

I explained that new seals were needed and was met with argument. Showing some of the lumps of stuff got a reaction and a demand for a new machine.

A few months later and there have been no more incidents.

Moral of the story is boil washing and cleaning the rubber seals.

Have a good evening and sweet dreams tonight.

[sassy59]

Good job you were there to discover the problem, thank goodness. Hope you are doing better too. Take care xxx

[Hidden]

Great. You solved the problem, and might I say that there is nothing whatever wrong in dealing with your own problems in life first, so long as you have registered that the one you care for is having a problem of their own and that you seriously intend to help as soon as you can. It's not selfish at all.

There's a message here for all of us when caring for others, and that's that what's being complained about may not be the source of the problem and it can often be that only through some detective work, including listening to the whole story carefully, can we get the 'light bulb moment' that throws us a solution.

It's also common that issuing edicts to the subject of your care often isn't a path to a solution. It's easy to take on the mantle of carer along with the mantle of controller and it can cause the cared-for to become stubborn and 'hard-eared' about listening to the message you are trying to convey.

And certainly embarrassment is something else that can lead to any of us concealing our real problem from others.

So it's good to hear that you got to the root of the problem through explanation and demonstration, leading to co-operation!