I've just come home from seeing my last housebound patient for the day. I only work as an optometrist now with the 'unseen' - those who can't get out alone because of disability or mental illness or being indisposed at her Majesty's displeasure - or all three. For 14 years I've lived and worked in da hood that Harriet now wears a stab vest to visit - because of course she doesn't live in her constituency. And I sat in my car and wept. It's been a day of emotion. This morning a disabled 70 year old man described, with tears running down his cheeks, how an accusation of pushing his 93 year old mother over had made him too scared to ask for help with her care. But he was now on his knees and not knowing who to turn to.
The lady I saw at the end of the day was so grateful, so positive, so accepting. Losing her sight to diabetes - which is what I try to prevent - wasn't the trigger for my weeping, nor was the way she sat so dignified in her wheelchair describing the sciatic nerve operation that had gone wrong. It wasn't the daughter I was introduced to, the same age as me and already blind and with organ failure from sickle cell aneamia. What moved me was the struggle. It was the way this lady accepted the battle to get Care. The forms they had been sent to fill in that they couldn't even see. The anxiety of being told hard fought-for help was being withdrawn because the criteria had changed. The relentless daily challenge of making it through - and the grace with which she faced it. She appreciated life in the way that JFK would have recognised 'the highest appreciation'- living by words not just uttering them. I felt ashamed of how little I appreciate - and that was why I wept. But that is also why I write here - and why I hope to live out my words of wanting to make life easier for people like her - in the world outside hers.
