We finally persuaded uncle to allow us to get a doctor in to see him, but only on condition it was the one whose parents live in the village that we already knew. We had to wait till he came to visit his parents, but he was *fantastic*. We'd briefed him well, and he went in to see uncle and saluted him as he entered the bedroom, which immediately set uncle off in 'captain' mode so that he behaved absolutely impeccably! The doctor was very encouraging about the care I was giving him, which was a relief, and examined the sore on uncle's heel which has come up over the last few weeks and gave a bit of advice on that. The doctor's wife was also there, and he accepted her well (he usually hates women, but wives of friends are ok) which is great as she is also a doctor and she might be able to pop over for a few minutes even when her husband can't. They are also going to arrange to contact some ex-students of his who are working in the area and speak a little English to see if any of them would be willing to visit if necessary. Also, they have three children, one a trainee doctor and two nurses, and he's going to ask them to pop in if ever they come to the village to visit their grandparents.

The main problem we're having with uncle at the moment is the thigh muscle in his right leg. It seems to go into a kind of involuntary spasm which makes his knee bend and throws all the weight onto his heel. I've started to give him some 'bio-salt' to keep his sodium/potassium levels ok in case it's that, but it still cramps up every now and then. It's not painful, but he can't voluntarily relax the leg when it's like that and I have to put him through a little stretching routing with it to persuade it to 'let go' so the leg will straighten and I can get the weight off the heel again. He also refuses to believe that there is anything wrong with his heel, which is a bit of a nuisance as he sometimes doesn't bother calling me when he notices that his leg is bent up and the heel ends up with too much weight on it for a while until I notice.

Other than that he seems reasonably stable at the moment. We've changed from using catheter bags to using a big 5 litre plastic tub to collect the pee as we were having a few problems with the pee not flowing into the bags and 'backing up' into the sheath, which made them come unstuck several times a day (and night!). We've had no problems since using the tubs though I still haven't managed to get a decent night's sleep.

Olivia, even if you haven't had a decent night's sleep (yet), you must be so relieved to have gotten in touch with medical help. "Captain mode" huh, what a brilliant manuever.

There are devices that protect the heels of people in bed, but someone else may be able to tell you which ones work best. Here is a page from the first on-line catalogue that came up when I googled heel protectors.


http://www.elderdepot.com/cust...-j-Z0CFY915QodM1lcpg

There are many other hits. For a while My father had some heel covers that were the synthetic "sheep skin" type. Some of these look like they might work better. For Mom, we keep a pillow under her knees and a long narrow pillow under her ankles. The tricky part is, that if you take pressure off of one place, you need to watch out for where the pressure ends up. It is gonna go somewhere.