Saturday, July 29, 2017

Honey Bunny




I've written about my home health person before her name is honey. I am not enamored with her don't think that I am. However, I understand now how many of my friends who are quadriplegics fall in love with their Home Care personnel. Falling in love with someone who takes care of you so thoroughly would be easy to do. But I have not. All the same honey and I have a close relationship. So close in fact that she is my only attendant and this of course is very poor planning. A couple days ago honey notified me that she had sprained her back or strained her back with one of her clients and that she had been ordered to bed rest for the next couple days. Important to me this information was of course because she's my attendant if she's not going to do me someone else will have to. Honey is part of a home health agency. I was under the impression we had a number of attendant similar to honey. I was wrong

Working with the information about honey gave me about her not coming on Friday. Enough it of proaction I called the main office who assured me they had someone coming and I emphasize that I needed to have somebody who had skills with a sling lift and who would be able to do enemas. That is a big issue for me. In fact that's what made me choose this organization in the first place when the last caregiving operation found out that my people were giving me enemas. Their folks under no circumstances were to engage in such activity. I had no idea. So in trying to find such a person I asked the people I worked with on the phone up front about this unique skill set which is not really to unique.

So last night around 5 the substitute caregiver was to show up. She was about a half hour late which is okay. As always had stripped and was waiting. I find if I do this stripping it cuts off a bit of time during the golden hour so that I can sure that I'll come in under an hour's time. Jackie what's a caregiver's name, Jackie was quite elderly actually but she can still function as a caregiver. It soon became apparent however she had no experience whatsoever with the lift but I felt comfortable enough to talk her through the process. However, as I instructed her to begin the process for the enema I could tell that she was totally ill at ease. Jackie has no experience whatsoever as a caregiver. She informed me she mostly worked as a housekeeper and sometimes sitting with folks. Once I learned this intelligence I stop the operation and had Jackie call the office. It was not Jackie's fault they knew what I needed I told them what I needed. It was just poor judgement. I contacted the office switchboard told them the problem and that person told me she would come out and do the job but it would be about an hour but I told her don't worry about it I'll wait until tomorrow /today and we would try it again to see if we could get it done right in the meantime honey calls and asks how it went. When I filled her in she was incensed and said that she would come over in the morning and provide the services I needed. I felt bad about her having to come in but she would not have anything else. She told me Angie the person who said that she would come would not be appropriate. Not only was Angie little experience, perhaps a bit more than Jackie but still little experienced and 9 months pregnant.

Her name is here around 8 this morning, the time that I wanted and we did a good job showering and toileting. I'm glad to have honey back I just don't know hell happened the next time. I would like to get at least one other girl with this agency trained for my needs but honey says that probably won't happen. I've got to figure out something does once the caregivers back starts to go the caregiver is soon to follow.

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