I was told I’d need nappy to stay home
private Dundee-based care company to visit me.
“They are great, but I am only able to pay for them to come four times a day.
“It is miserable waiting for someone to come, imagine how it would feel if you needed the toilet but couldn’t move.”
Robert continued: “What’s made it worse is the medicine I take makes me constipated, so the doctor gives me something to counteract that, but it works too well and gives me diarrhoea.
“Taking the laxatives means I suddenly have to go and if there’s no one with me, I soil myself. “It’s very distressing.” Mr Mitchell alleges when he explained to his Perth and Kinross Council social worker he needed more care, he was told the only option for him to remain in his own Perthshire home was for him “to wear a nappy”.
The stroke hit Mr Mitchell when he was 42 and he spent some time in a nursing home.
He left to live at home for a while but was injured, breaking his hip when he was trying to transfer himself from his wheelchair to the toilet and went back to a care home environment.
Mr Mitchell, once manager of a fleet of ice cream vans in Perth, is living at home again and would prefer it to stay that way, but if he cannot find a solution to his needs, he fears returning to a nursing home is his only option.
A spokesperson for Perth and Kinross Council said: ““While we cannot comment under any circumstance on individual clinical matters, it is standard practice across the communities we serve, for care packages to be reviewed.
“And such reviews and reassessments are carried out and implemented as quickly as possible. ” Former ice cream van manager Robert Mitchell