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I bought some toddler feeding bottles. Though I had to remove the useless inner tube. This allows her to drink at modest head inclinations by rotating the bottle spout.
My wife has agonising sores on her lower back and has been lying on a 75mm/ 3" foam mattress on the floor since mid day on Friday. She woke me half an hour after I went to bed. She was uncomfortable again. So I had to adjust her pillows and massage her calves. She is in a great deal of pain and every movement is agony.
Just lifting the weight of her head is very hard work. Unfortunately it is the only way I can get another pillow under her head. She is now too weak to lift herself in any way. Which makes sliding towels under her bottom. To allow her to urinate. A terrifying ordeal. Until the Kommune workers and nurses arrive there will be no bed pan. Nor drugs to ease the pain.
My wife is suffering from numerous delusions. Paranoia is a constant theme in her lost items in her chaotic bedding and surroundings. Time has become hugely variable for her. She constantly complains about being "upside down" in bed. Particularly when lying flat. With only two soft pillows under her head.
My wife has received an official message that her first medicine costs are covered. Still nothing from the Kommune nor medical side. By sheer luck I remembered her password and where she hid her numbers card to access eBoks. Which is the Danish official, online, secure website. Where all communication takes place. Instead of physical and slower post in the form of letters.
I have changed my usual indoor sandals this morning. To soft soled slippers. Hoping to avoid waking her as I sneak downstairs to the bathroom. She is still asleep at 7.30 despite the neighbour's [24x365 outdoor] guard dog barking furiously at the postman. Or any passing cyclist.
Last night I went back outside to move all the [failed house move] packing materials across to the other side of the drive. Otherwise no vehicles could get through. God knows what any "visitors" will think! Perhaps they will have a hotline to the refuse department and get it removed? I have been searching online for the Kommune's bulk "waste" removal
service. Nothing. The Kommune's telephone hours are 10-3. So no early phone call
to the "refuse department" as I had hoped. WYSIWYG.
My wife must have been secretly squirrelling packaging and boxes for years. In the forlorn hope of a move to a [far] better place. Thanks to our toxic neighbours she has had no contacts for years. The annual visit by the chimney sweep has been a rare highlight.
The racist prick, who used to call annually can no longer bully us and carry out his vandalism. Obviously another fully paid up member of the neo-fascist Danish People's Party. A nasty bunch of bent crooks buying cheap votes. With a completely empty promise to end all immigration. It would be extremely hard to assemble this lot outside of Denmark, Nazi Germany, or the "Lynch Belt" of the Southern USA.
In the absence of communication, we can only assume that all our toxic neighbours are pure racists too. [My wife is 99% Danish -1%Swedish. But of course the white trash neighbours don't know that. One of them put up signs saying "Fuck the British" at the start of our own 100m run of drive. He was a welder, "working the system," with "a bad back." Not bad enough, allegedly, to stop him lifting two crates of beer simultaneously from the ground. Nor repeated procreation with assorted unmarried girls.
Snow clearance was certainly not in his [legally binding] job description. Not as as a home owner with a boundary drive. Particularly the year we had a 16" snowfall in one day. The very moment we had dug ourselves out. A three day ordeal to clear over the full 120m length our drive. He immediately drove down to fetch a crate of beer from his outbuilding. Which is situated just beside our gates. He was supposedly, legally responsible for shared hedge clipping duties too.
None of the occupants of this adjoining property have touched the boundary hedge in 25 years. The same property has lain empty as "property portfolio padding" for years now. That was after yet another forced auction. The last lot to live there left a smashed car. Right beside our gates. This was after a friend had a drunken crash and wanted the evidence kept out of sight. The wreck has now been there for years.
I only had to erect the double garden gates to keep another neighbours' thieving kids out. They would come in to steal all my wife's garden flowers while we were out. Or congregate, with toddlers, around our garden pond. Which is where my wife found them. Hands full of her stolen flowers. On her return home one day. One of these abused [?] kids used to constantly thump his little sister in the stomach. Just for the pure fun of it.
The [alleged] "parents" would tear branches from our garden trees. To give perches to their exotic birds in their outdoor cages. They kept Muscovy ducks under a door. Which they stole from outside my shed. Fenced around, only to the door's perimeter, as a roof leaning on our fence. In cramped and appalling liquid mud conditions.
Their dogs would die off repeatedly and unexpectedly. After being left outside. To bark incessantly. In a narrow slot on the north side of their house. Where the elevated field edge started and precisely where our house faced. They would import extra dogs from the "extended" family. Then leave them to bark 7x24 while they went away on holiday.
These same peasants would use un-silenced, blunt chainsaws for hours, most days, for decades. To produce firewood for their "extended family." They regularly brought in a stinking old tractor. Which they left running. Right outside our living room windows. This was used to drive a log splitter.
The tractor was never turned off until the end of their "working" day. Not even while he and others went in to watch the football on the TV. Or retired for a wet lunch. He hadn't worked for many years until very recently. When he suddenly reinvented himself as a builder.
We started going out from dawn to dusk every weekend. Just to escape their constant racket. They now illegally burn lorry loads of demolition timber as firewood, 24x365, in an old water heating stove. Their toxic smoke fills our house whenever their is a SE wind. [A regular occurrence here.] We haven't been able to open the windows in all the time we have lived here.
The Kommune's "smoke inspector" arrived on request and coughed in the foul sulphurous atmosphere. Then explained that there wasn't a high enough reading on his particle counter to warrant action. They now saw up old, half-timbered house, framing beams. Which have thick layers of lead paint. Much of it going back hundreds of years. No doubt the chipboard, from the demolished kitchen cabinets in the same lorry load, isn't wasted either. Climate friendly, Green Denmark? Yeah, right!
Another racist neighbour would turn her back on either of us as we passed their house on the main drive. She would completely ignore all our greetings [in Danish.] She didn't speak to us in the 14 years she lived there. They finally moved out. After a drunken "waster" of a local "builder" bought the adjoining derelict property on forced auction. For mere peanuts.
He ruins the lives of countless "neighbours" across the county. As he spends years making a hideous mess of the dirt cheap properties he buys up on auction for [supposedly] renting out. Before filling their gardens with absolute junk and completely ruining local property values.
His own "land" is covered in the most unsightly heap of scrap metal, rusting vehicles and a dozen, partial, prefab, building site offices. His neighbours could no more sell their homes than walk to the moon. I bet he still gets the EU agricultural support! His house hasn't been fully tiled and hasn't been touched for years.
Every property he owns has "For Sale" signs up all around. He cut down a shelter belt of trees as his first task. Before half demolishing his latest derelict at the start of our shared drive. Then he installed large, rusting trailers as close to the "neighbours" house as he could possibly manage. "It's always the missus who wants to move!" He quipped to me as I passed his unbelievable mess.
The branches, from the huge trees he had felled, were deliberately spread far and wide across the adjoining field. They lay there for over six months. Presumably the landowner farmer wants to spray the area now. So the "builder" has had to remove all his crap prematurely.
Presumably one of our rural, peasant neighbours was also responsible for sending the oversized, plain white, cardboard postcards, through the post. With large script, in Biro capitals. Accusing us, in Danish, of being on the scrounge from the kommune. [Social security] Ironic, indeed, when I had been working for three years for a large Danish company at that point. Not that they'd know that through their filter of blind, race hatred.
One neighbour's offspring later took to shooting at our home and greenhouse with air rifles. They left dead birds of prey outside our gates. Which we then had to padlock from this point onwards for our own security. We would regularly find lead pellets in the greenhouse gutter and garden.
We never received a penny of social support until official retirement. Simply because we had some "savings" left from the sale of our house in the UK. Even our [old age] pensions are taxed at 39%. We receive no "winter heating cheque." Which is meant to help the elderly with heating their refrigerator living conditions. Of typically, badly insulated, old houses. I don't want a heating subsidy. But it seems only those with gas central heating are to be heavily subsidised in Denmark.
8am and still nothing is happening. I have my dumb phone in my pocket. Ready to kill the ringtone on quick draw. To avoid waking my sleeping wife. Every second of sleep is a precious escape from her hideous, endless nightmare.
Success! First we had a very efficient and wonderfully kind "home help." I lack the correct job translation for "Hjempleje" for the moment. She organised all the stuff Shirley would need. Then a pleasant and highly professional nurse turned up at about 10am. She gave my wife some of the pain killing medicine she badly needed. Thankfully my wife is now dozing.
The hospital bed and other kit arrived at about 11.00. Unfortunately the bed had to be dismantled to get it in through our narrow hallway. No promised hoist? Apparently not. How is my wife going to get into the bed without one? Or reach the huge, toilet chair? Best not to ask!
The kommune don't have a bulk refuse, removal service. I was given the number of a "man in a white van." I'm hoping he will turn up today. His website looked perfectly presentable.
The home help came back again and we lifted my wife bodily onto the bed between us. My wife went into a neuralgia spasm at the pain of it all! She is now being changed out of her normal clothes. So I gave them some space.
After a brief shock and agony, of being lifted bodily, my wife was much more relaxed in a raised position on her new bed. She remained calm even when we rotated the bed to give her a view of her surroundings and easy access from both sides. Fortunately she soon zonked out from the morphine. With her mouth wide open and her eyes glazed and half shut. I just want to cry and cry.
I have been steadily clearing stuff out of the living room as much as possible. What to do with it all? My wife was a keen collector, over a very long time. Much of it is quite fragile. At the moment I feel completely overwhelmed. I can't even find any clean underclothes to wear!
There isn't room to put anything anywhere without moving something else first. All my efforts to improve the visibility and order of her wardrobe, for her return, are suddenly, completely pointless. Some very large clothing donations are likely in the charity recycling bins.
14.00. A sudden brightening. Even a hint of sunshine. I went outside to trim a conifer. So I could see the drive beyond our gates. It ought to be lopped at an appropriate height. Just so I can see further from the upstairs window. Do I feel brave enough yet? To flout my wife's admonitions on giving her trees "a haircut." Even if they do completely block the view?
There was a phone call from our doctor. A meeting is arranged with the nurse and home help here for Thursday.
Then "man in a white van" turned up and we agreed a skip hire for Friday morning with a fast turnaround. My wife's packing materials collection all has to be burnable material. Or costs will rise dramatically. Not remotely cheap, but I have a chance to find more packaging in the meantime. Hidden away in all the other nooks and crannies. Where I never dared to pry. There have been far more people in the house today. Than in all of the 25 years we have lived here!
Two more nurses turned up later. They are coming back at intervals during the night. I buried myself in tidying the kitchen. To avoid dwelling on the tragic situation. Removing the huge and ugly oak cupboard from the kitchen, working alone, was a noisy affair. Thankfully my wife slept right through it. All of today's visitors are lovely people. So kind, so empathetic and so gentle.
The nurses came back later again. They dressed the bed sore on my wife's lower back with a large plaster. Then I spoon fed her a little tea. She seemed happy and relaxed and very grateful for all the kind and expert attention. She appreciated being able to sleep and wake refreshed. Instead of being in constant pain. The whole weekend must have been unending torture for her!
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