Hi everyone,
Hoping for some pointers from the knowledgeable people here.
My husband has PD and I am his carer. He’d been doing pretty well with it but unfortunately got sepsis and has been pretty poorly in hospital for about 8 weeks now. He has gone from being reasonably independent with a little support from me, to being unable to walk for more than a few steps, doubly incontinent and, although much more coherent than he has been, he is still hallucinating off and on.
The hospital now want to discharge him and are pressing me quite hard on this. The discharge plan seems to be one phone call from the OT which doesn’t seem quite right to me. However, we have no downstairs bathroom and he will not be able to manage the stairs. I am in the process of clearing a downstairs room for a bedroom, and I am told we are not being offered a hospital bed “because he can stand”. Therefore I need to buy a bed, fast.
Realistically he is going to spend a lot of time in bed and needs to be comfortable and safe. If I am going to have to buy a bed I would rather get an adjustable hospital bed now. Also, without a downstairs bathroom it’s going to have to be bed baths until I can get a builder in to put in a bathroom, so I want a raiseable bed so I don’t mess up my back. I know they’re quite expensive, but speed of delivery is going to be the selling point here. I haven’t a clue because I haven’t had to think about adapting the house up to now and I’m going to have to do it rather fast.
Any experiences, tips or pointers?