Sunday, June 12, 2016

Min-Asisst


I've always been interested are rather fascinated by the languages of specific professions. Every occupation/profession has its own vocabulary, symbols and abbreviations. Medicine in particular is an art form/quasi- science is replete with such taxonomies and symbols. I guess it's best to have such a structure to discuss people in their anomalies, diseases and disabilities. It's quick to the point in many cases allows the professional not to be emotionally connected to the individual.

In the past 14 to 24 months I have degraded from a totally independent individual to one that is classified as minimal assistance or min-assist. I've been thinking a great deal about this label the last couple weeks. As you know, I have worked very hard to get to this point of minimal assistance needed to live independently i.e. in my home as opposed to a long-term care facility of some sort. This was real work. I worked out daily in the gym tried to build up muscle and figure out approaches to do things like get in and out of bed by myself, get dressed and undressed by myself in such. The only real problem armor I did not measure up to the need was toileting and showering. These two exercises require more muscle than I currently have – – I use the word currently in the belief that I will increase muscle and decrease weight which may allow me to get back some of this ability – – but hope to regain. But even at that there are just some things that I don't have the fine motor or even gross motor abilities to perform. Like even if I were able to transfer from my chair to the toilet, which I can, I cannot transfer back from the toilet to my chair. That's part of the problem the main problem is that I've become somewhat suppository dependent which means inserting something up my anus every three days the poop. I just don't have the ability to reach behind hold something between my thumb and forefinger and squeeze to pull this off. Therefore I need an assistant of some sort to do this process. Therefore, I don't have an assistant home have to go outside to get that which is some form of home health. Currently, I have contracted with home health program here in Murray for someone to come in every three days to help me do bowel maintenance and a quick shower hopefully. I hope I can bring this off within the 60 minutes that I will be charged for. The charge is 25 bucks an hour and I really don't want to go beyond one hour.

My first home health assistant should be here tonight around 7 o'clock. I don't know who it is I have contracted every three days till the end of the month to see how this works. Luckily, about half of that time my assistance will be provided by Gail who has served me before. Gail is older, somewhat frail but strong enough to do the job. I hve found her dependable little spooky sometimes but she's always got the job done as far as I'm concerned. I wish I could've gotten her for everyone the needed times but that was not possible but I'm thankful to have gotten what I got. I just hope this is going to work.


I hate paying money for this assistance but looks like the best/only option when you're min-assist.

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