The night was disturbed, broken by frequent visits to the commode and a wet bed at 6am. Isobel was very tired in the morning (I was shattered by the effort of lifting her many times and felt poorly - my blood pressure had gone up a lot). Iona arrived at 9am.

Tracey Cook and the district nurse Wendy Williams called at 9.30am and the morning was spent filling out the new assessment form. The previous form filled out on Tuesday was only 30 pages of detailed questions. The new form is 48 pages, but does not seem to ask much about the actual problems of caring for Isobel. Isobel spent the morning minimising her problems and being atypically cooperative. It was difficult to get across the extent to which Isobel's behavior is being temporarily controlled by sedation. The district nurse had not seen Isobel in the weeks leading up to the intervention of the crisis team. We seem to have passed in two days from a situation where Isobel's medical needs were paramount to a bureaucratic maze where assessments are made by persons who are unaware of Isobel's difficulties and local authority committees that operate on the basis that "funding is the most important issue". At one point it was suggested that "someone coming in" a couple of times a week to give Isobel a bed bath would solve her problems! I asked Tracey Cook whether the assessment would take account of the report from Steven Jones, head of the crisis team; she said that she did not know about this but would look for it.

After lunch Iona and Euan did the shopping while Isobel slept and I dozed. Isobel woke every few minutes to use the commode and the last twenty four hours she has needing lifting into bed more often than ever before - although during the long morning meeting she had not needed to go to the toilet at all.

For dinner Isobel had chicken in basil sauce with potato slices, followed by ice cream. Later she had garlic bread. She was asleep by 10pm.