Author: Steve Antipolo

Zoey is my third child, now 24 years old. She was the one we had to cushion Matt from the responsibility of having to care for his older brother, Jermaine.

We were not to know then that Zoey would have special needs all of her own.

Thankfully she is officially moderate needs which has meant there have been no health worries in particular but that she had significant developmental delay. ‘Delay’ is rather inaccurate as it implies there will be catch up eventually, this is not the case, she is what she is.

To get a better idea, her academic level perhaps reaches that of a 5 year old. She can come across as quite normal but, put any 5 year old in an adults body and they can come across as grown ups for a short time at least.

For the majority of her life Zoey has been no real issue. True, I may compare this to Jermaine who most certainly was a lot of trouble but, on the whole, she’s been very manageable albeit it is still quite difficult having a constant 5 year old around. She’s never really got to grips with personal hygiene so we’ve had to take over a fair bit there. Preparing food obviously needs a lot of input as well.

We noticed though that over the past several months there have been some changes in her. Nothing significant at first but slowly we’ve observed some weight loss, some excessive behaviours, some issues with eating generally. With the boys (my grandsons here) she used to just like playing with them but, over the last month or so she’d become overly protective of them. She would get abusive and rude to Sean & Daisy if they had to tell the boys off, for example.

This past month also we’d noticed a reluctance to wash at all and very soon after a refusal to eat or drink. More difficult to quantify is her lack of sleep which we now know to be considerable.

We got to a point a little over a week ago when her normally quiet and bubbly attitude turned violent and abusive. Perhaps before that even, days are blurring into each other now. So adamant was she that she was not eating, drinking or getting washed that she’s lash out at anyone in range who mentioned it to the point she needed restraint for safety.

The GP was called on two occasions, 28th August when anti depressant medication was prescribed that Zoey refused to take and again on September 1st. The second time the GP became concerned about her health and decided that admittance to hospital was the best option and order an ambulance to arrive within 4 hours. It arrived after 11 hours. It was the early hours of September 2 that Zoey was admitted.

We explained her learning difficulties going way back to birth many times to several different people as we also did with our current concerns. Daisy stayed with her the first night and Zoey didn’t sleep at all. I stayed with Zoey a second night when she slept for around 45 minutes. Despite on many occasions telling staff that she was special needs, that she needed significantly more attention than she was getting, nothing changed.

On Friday 4 I contacted the Patient Line (PALS) and got them involved. It turned out that special needs wasn’t anywhere at all on Zoey’s notes, they had completely overlooked it despite being told all those times.

The situation was rectified and she moved to 1 – 1 care from that moment onward. Even so, late that Friday Daisy and me were called to the hospital to tend to Zoey because they didn’t know what to do!

Since arriving at hospital she had to wait in a corridor before being seen for over an hour. She then waited on a trolley from midnight until 5am only being observed occasionally. At 5am she was moved to the Emergency Assessment Unit (EAU) to a private room which suited her well. In the morning they moved her out of their into the main ward where she went downhill fast. Before the day was out they’d moved to yet another location in the same ward. On Friday night they assured us that she would not stay back in a private room in EAU … how many moves so far?

We arrived early on Saturday morning to discover she’d been moved again! We’d been asked to go on the previous day so the mental health team could do an assessment at 11am.

We found Zoey the next floor up in this other ward, at least in a room of her own with a carer. We were all there by 10:45 to be told the person from the Mental Heath team was a little tied up but would be there by midday. She turned up a little after that.

We had a couple of hour long meeting with this stupid woman who would take no responsibility for anything

It was left no better off than when she arrived.

Early hours of Sunday morning and we’re getting another call from the hospital to go in and deal with Zoey who was trying to leave the hospital. They had no powers to restrain her so were hanging on to her by nothing more than a little one-upmanship.

We eventually got her back to the room and I asked for the emergency mental health team. They arrived around 4pm and eventually agreed to do a section 5(2) which gives them 72 hours during which time they can enforce Zoey staying there but have to arrange a full assessment.

They then left me with a telephone number to call to start the emergency assessment off, they wouldn’t even take responsibility for that!

So, that’s how it is now. Zoey still isn’t eating, sleeping, drinking or washing. She’s lost all this weight.

She’s begging me to take her home every time, it’s stupidly upsetting. There is nothing I can do, she has to get well again and were ineffective here now. She will promise all sorts to get home but won’t deliver any of it. I said to her earlier, drink a cup of tea and I will see what we can do, she promised she would and then, when it was offered she refused to even hold it.

We shall see what tomorrow brings.

My priority and driving force is and always shall be what is best for Zoey but, if only life were that simple.

Because she is now an inpatient at the hospital I need to contact all those I get benefits from. I will probably have those benefits stopped quite quickly. So, in the meantime I lose my status as a carer. I will be expected to look for work. But, if I get a job and Zoey then gets better, I will be expected to be here and take over again yet they will likely take months to put the benefits back in place again. If she never comes back, I have other long term worries which I am not going into here that make me really sad. I am not afraid of work but this one wouldn’t be sorted by me working or not.

So, that it for now. Just when I am feeling the most optimistic and stupidly happy I have ever felt, along comes this to knock me down again.

Trying to stay positive, it’s not easy, not on my own. I need the man I love by me and that is just not going to happen any time soon.

Clearly I support Immigration, if I didn’t then my future plans are hypocritical.

What is immigration?

Put simply, it is a person not born here but living here. It covers both those here temporarily and those intending to settle.

Break it down further and it also covers people like the Governor of the Bank of England (no less) or the man who just hitched a ride in a truck through the tunnel from France. Both those are migrants.

Are both legal though?

That rather depends because it isn’t strictly speaking an easy answer.

Bank Manager is not on the list of those people we seek from abroad to work in this country so, how comes the Governor got his job? I guess it’s because he knew someone who knew someone. I can’t believe we are lacking suitable UK talent we need a Canadian to run the bank which represents this country.

This, however, highlights the problem.

We are not as a nation against immigration, what we are against is a certain type of immigrant. If they are wealthy, in jobs we cannot hope to have and speak English then we seem to be OK with it.

If they are poor, in need. If English isn’t their first language and, particularly, if they are black, we seem to have real issue with that sort of immigrant. Perhaps because we don’t see an immediate benefit to ourselves of that.

You see, we have zero problem with someone from India who opens a restaurant, no issue at all with anyone from Asia if they open up a restaurant because we sort of like Indian or Chinese food so, they’re OK but, the random black guy … hmm, what benefit?

In reality, probably not a lot at first, give it time.

We have this instant acceptance for those who are familiar. Americans, Australians, those from New Zealand & Canada, anyone who looks like the people down the Chinese restaurant, we are cool with all of those and why? Well, most if not all of those just integrate by default. They all speak English after a fashion and none of them have radical ideas which might in some way change the familiar country we’re used to.

Now, we are left with two categories we have the biggest issue with.

Eastern Europeans & those from India and Pakistan, or the Middle East.

Eastern Europeans because, well, too often they don’t integrate at all. They have no intention of settling here, they are just here to work and send money home. They will do jobs we wouldn’t want to do for the money we wouldn’t want to accept. In short, the UK Pound is worth so much in their country that even minimum wage is an attractive proposition to them. So, whilst they do pay taxes here and provide services, they are too visible. Our towns and cities are becoming seemingly over run with people who don’t speak English in the street and who open shops selling the stuff they are used to back home making some parts of the UK feel like ‘Little Poland’. Of course, we’d never do such a thing .. you know, like in the Spanish Coastal Resorts or Ibiza where every other bar is a British Pub and a huge amount of restaurants are owned by the British, likewise shops catering for our needs. So, that’s the way Europe works but our society is full of NIMBY’s (not in my back yard)

The other category, the Indians, Syrians, Muslims generally, from Pakistan and so on … we don’t like the heavy influence of their religions. We don’t like the skyline broken up by a Mosque, it’s not British. We don’t want Muslim Schools … Catholic schools are fine and Catholicism is not British either by the way, as Henry VIII.

So, what is the answer?

Look, we keep blaming them, it’s not them it’s us who are the problem. We have an inconsistent and prejudice view of immigration.

On the one hand we’re dead against it because they are not like us and yet, on the other, if they suit our needs we love them.

What would really solve the issue is if this country learnt a little from some of the countries immigrants come from. In many there would be zero tolerance of any religious symbolism which wasn’t their own. They will take offence at those who refuse to wear ‘suitable’ clothing. They will make laws we would class as prejudicial and why do they do this? To preserve the personality of their culture.

In contrast, over here, we’ve had an anything goes policy. People are free to practise their own religion, set up their own faith schools, never to integrate into British society. There is the problem right there. By allowing so much freedom we’ve given away a significant part of our identity. We are so afraid of being called racist we’ve allowed them to ignore the race of the country they now live in and to imprint their own identity over ours. That is wrong on so many levels. We’ve allowed freedom to deny freedom to those others who do not share the beliefs of certain immigrant groups. Even 2nd and 3rd generation are perpetuating this voluntary apartheid between their culture and ours.

Look, the people in Calais, that’s a smokescreen, the same with the refugees on the boats, they are not the same problem and should never be connected with the problem we have.

With those we need to end the hostilities in their country of origin, stop talking about it and do something. We need to close down the criminal gangs we know are operating, keep those people safe as close to their homes as possible. As humans we should not tolerate the treatment these people are getting. Many are legitimate migrants. We didn’t earn the right to be British, we didn’t chose to exit the groin of a British citizen, we are here by no more right than the randomness of birth. Sure, that matters but, the saying, ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ should mean something. We’ve not earned the right merely by birth to say we are better than them, we need to show some compassion.

There is nothing a government likes to do more than find scapegoats to distract us from the issues they are not dealing with. In this country we’re experts at the blame game. I believe it was Kennedy who said “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”.

We need to stop relying on our politicians to tell the truth and do the right thing, we certainly need to stop believing everything we read in the press.

Time to think about think about this properly.

Trying to remember what I did today, not so easy as I am sure I was doing several things at the same time … apologies to Daisy, I think I didn’t quite complete the dishwasher bit.

I forced myself to stay in bed a little later. Sure, I woke up just before 7am and each half hour but I didn’t get up until after 9am.

I took Daisy to Sainsbury as she needed to get something for a birthday present.

Around 11 something I came back and Anne popped in for a chat, always nice to see her and the kids though Zach tried flying off some steps but he’s OK.

Zoey has still not been eating or drinking, it’s been many weeks now since she started not being right.

I called 111 which is our emergency Health Service number and spent an age on the phone to them, probably an hour or so. Got through to the GP surgery and eventually got them to send out a doctor who examined Zoey thoroughly and concluded she was physically OK but emotionally a mess. She’s been prescribed some anti depressants.

In there somewhere I managed to spend some time with my Dennis who is unwell at the moment, he has a fever so I was mean and made him go take a cold shower.

Quite possibly there is more stuff I did in there somewhere but, I can’t be doing with trying to work out what.

Hopefully Saturday is a little less busy.

I read somewhere the clocks change this weekend. It was only later, after I spoke to Dennis and told him, it dawned on me this was way too early so … it’s October 25 they go back, not any time soon!

In life we are said to meet one soul mate, that special person we can totally relate to, who loves us no matter what and we love them the same.

There was a time, not so long ago when we only had the people within a few streets of us to find them from. Then there were trains and telephones and we might find them in the next town. Cars came along to make life easier, TV showed us a bigger view and they might now be anywhere in the country. Then we got air travel and the internet, we’ve a whole world to choose from.

Our streets is now a planet so, why are you alone precisely?

My soul mate is 6,668 miles away flying in a dead straight line, that’s like, wow!