Long Live Adulting….

had such a lovely time last week. I got to be a grown-up, which doesn't happen very often, and it was so wonderful!

Confused? Let me explain.

As a severely disabled person there are many things I cannot do for myself. I can't walk. I can't get dressed by myself. I can't wash myself. I can't make a meal. I can't even make myself a cup of tea if I want one. I have to rely on someone else to do everything for me.

Now, before my medical condition deteriorated slowly and inexorably in 2014, I was perfectly capable of doing all that needed to be done either on my own or, if necessary, with the assistance of my, now adult, children. I went out to work full-time during the week, looked after my own family, visited friends in the evening, was a lady who lunched at the weekend, attended social events as and when I wanted to, did my own shopping, stayed up late if I felt like it, had a lie-in at the weekend and got to go away on short breaks if I fancied it. In other words, I had a lifestyle that was comparable with the lifestyles of my peers and the majority of the adult population of this country and most of the rest of the world. I was an adult who got to pick and choose what I wanted to do and I did adult things. In my family we call that adulting. I spent my life adulting.

Then I got sicker and things changed. The Multiple Sclerosis which has been part of my life for the past thirty years decided it was going to throw a spanner in the works and deteriorate. I wound up in hospital and, although I am a lot better than I was, things have had to change. For the last eighteen months, this has meant that I have had to have carers, or, as many disabled people prefer to call them, Personal Assistants. PAs. PAs coming into my home to attend to just about everything I need, every single day. Quite hard to come to terms with for an independent woman such as myself but I don't have an option. It is either PAs in my own house or live in residential accommodation away from my family with no independence whatsoever. No choice really, so PAs it has to be.

And that's the issue. For most of those eighteen months my PAs have come through an agency, paid for by Social Services. I have had little or no control over the care that I receive. I have not been able to say what I wanted done, when I wanted it done or how I wanted it done. I have had no choice at all. My 'ladies', as we call them, show up every morning at 9am to wash me and get me ready for the day, make me breakfast and do a small amount of simple housework if they have the time. I have two ladies, for forty-five minutes each, to do everything. At lunchtime I get thirty minutes care from two more ladies when they make me something to eat and get me another cuppa and then, in the evening, another two ladies come at the horrifyingly late hour of 7pm, for forty five minutes each, to get me ready for the night and, if my children are out, warm up a ready meal for my supper. And that, until recently, was it. With a little careful negotiation I was able to make bedtime as late as, shock, horror, 8.30pm but only once a month, if I was lucky, as a special treat. Then about two months ago, I managed to get onto something called Direct Payments whereby Social Services give the money they are prepared to spend on my care package to me and I get to employ my own PAs to come when I want, and do what I want, and everything I feel is necessary, at a time that suits me.

And I am loving it!

I have got my life back! I get to choose who comes, when they come and what they do when they are here. I don't get to choose how long they are here for, Social Services still dictate how much time I get, but not when that time has to be. And this means that, if I want to stay out past around six-thirty in the evening, I can!

So, last Thursday, I did! I went out with some friends, to the pub, for food, alcohol, conversation and fun and I didn't have to get home for my evening care visit until the startlingly late hour, for me anyway, of ten-thirty. No watch-checking, no worrying, no rushing, no leaving the party long before the end, no having to act like a small child or a teenager with a curfew. I got to do some adulting again and I loved it. I have not enjoyed myself quite so much in a very long time.

And, now that I have discovered that life can be fun again, I want more. Adulting, in future, will have to have a much greater role in my life. I already have my next night out planned and I've only got a couple of weeks to go. After eighteen months of being treated like a very small child I can wait. But not for long.

Life is for living and I want to do some more.

Long live adulting.