Julie, you are in an awful situation - in fact, it's impossible in my view.
YOU have to take charge of this situation before you have a breakdown.
Here is how I see your situation. Feel free to tell me I'm completely wrong, but you've already had two recent failed discharges.
Your husband is bullying you, and that simply isn't fair. He is no longer in charge. You are!
In your other post about building a downstairs bathroom, knocking through walls to make the house wheelchair friendly, etc.
You MUST make it clear to him that if he is ever to come home again, he has to be really patient and consider your needs, as well as his.
In the meantime, he needs to be placed temporarily somewhere else, a nursing home for reablement perhaps. If he is going to be a wheelchair user from now on, has he actually been in a wheelchair all day in hospital? Can he negotiate corners, manage to transfer onto the toilet etc? Pneumonia leaves someone very weak, what he thinks he can do may be completely unrealistic. It's all very well doing a short "test drive" in hospital, but home alone it will be very different.
The hospital want their bed back. (I had this issue with my mum who was in and out of hospital many times). Sadly, very often they tell half truths. Do NOT believe everything you are told about what your husband can do, see it for your own eyes.
Social Services might arrange 3 carers a day, but that's only going to be for at most 2, or perhaps 3 hours a day.
The other 21-22 will be down to you!
In those 22 hours, he will be compiling a lost of jobs for you to do when you get home.
Carers are very unlikely to prepare an evening meal for both of you, just his.
They won't clean the house as it is. Who is going to deal with the house alterations and the plaster dust?
If he moves back in with you until this is all done, you will end up having to give up work, before or after a breakdown.
At 59, it will be 9 years before you can retire on a pension.
Husband is 78. In 9 years time he would be 87.
Is he going to last that long, given his current health?
If you give up work to care for him, how will you manage financially?
How will you manage if he dies first, without his pension.
Would you be well enough to go back to work?
Please don't think I'm horrible raising these practicalities.
I was widowed suddenly in 2006 when I was just 54, my husband was 58.
Soon afterwards, I was disabled in a car accident.
We ran a business together, so in 3 months I lost my health, my business partner and my best friend.
I was also caring for my disabled mum, who died a few years ago at the age of 87.
Old age is difficult even for someone who used to be fit.
For someone who is old and disabled it is so much harder still.
Protecting your own wellbeing is very important.
Start by putting your answerphone on.
Agree a time when he can ring you.
Tell him that you will NOT discuss discharge until the doctor says he is well enough.
He cannot in any case come home until the adaptations the OT has requested are complete.
In the short term, he is going to have to accept residential care. It will be nicer than hospital, not as nice at home.
A home will have 24 hour staff on duty, not just one exhausted wife.
He will have to work hard to prove in the home that he can manage if he goes home to you.
