Unsung Hero's.

People can be quite odd, can't they? I mean, I know I'm one to talk, but even I'm amazed....

It seemed perfectly innocuous. Bear sorts my tablets out once a week. I have one of those four-compartment a day things, which have to be loaded with 19 tablets a day, for seven days.

That works out at 133 per per week, consisting of the sequence 10-1-1-6-1, which translates as 6am, 9am, 3pm, 6pm, 10pm. Yup, that's more than 4, but, needs must. If you think that 133 tablets a day is a lot, (or if you prefer, 6,916 per year) Notice that the major intake is at 6am.

No way do I expect Bear to be up before 6am to do 133 tablets once a week. In fact, I'm just grateful she does it at all. She does it because she sees it as her duty. And because the regime is so strict and some of the tablets so dangerous in the wrong combinations that I'm not trusted to do them myself. Rightly so.

Amazingly, she can sort out all the complex combination's, for a week, in 10 minutes.

Bear gets Carers Allowance. Feel free to check how much that is on DirectGov, but for her, it works out at £0.74 per hour, and she has to be available to me 35 hours per week.

With me so far? :)

Bear was sorting out my tablets, and we had a visitor. One of those is Folic acid - commonly given to pregnant women. It's been shown that it can hep prevent the risk of further stroke. Our GP had mentioned it to us, but said he'd prefer not to prescribe it, but he thought if we didn't mind paying for it, based on his research, every little helps. It's only a couple of quid per month.

Our visitor noticed that the little plastic bottle of folic tablets was on the table. He asked why Bear (straight over my head) why I was taking 'a vit'. I replied it was recommended.

"If he just needs vit's, why's he taking all that stuff?", he asked, ignoring me. Bear patiently explained all the boxes strewn across the coffee table. It took some time.

"Thats all very well" he said. "But nobody needs vit's and tablets. Nobody needs that many tablets. There's something funny going on here. I've got to my age, and all I need is a statin at bed time. My mate had a stroke, and they only gave him two tablets". His mate, my Bears great uncle, died at 76 , 15 years after his stroke.

I sat, quietly, and listened. His pain and his anger was obvious - you didn't need to empathic to understand his pain and grief and his fear.

For more information text 'STROKE' to 82010