Kura
twitter.com/puccarts
- 10,994
- Posts
- 19
- Years
- Age 34
- London, UK (orig. Toronto, Canada)
- Seen Aug 30, 2021
Ooh boy what a morning.. well this is more of a personal update if anything just to track down when this has happened since it's been happening more often lately.. plus I know most, if not all of you, don't care for this sort of stuff and only want lolzworthy content. No, I'm not "bawing" I just want to write this down in case I ever need to know when it happened at a later date. Please keep in mind you are completely not obligated to read the following.
Yesterday was thanksgiving.. and yesterday we also got a call from the nurse who comes in every Tuesday and Thursday to look after my grandmother. My grandmother is 89 and she had a stroke 10 years ago which left her basically bed-ridden. Recently we've also not been able to put her into her wheelchair because of a large bed wound that formed one month that she was very ill and her skin became weak. However we've been keeping up with it and just got the VAC machine in (a near impossible feat) so it can help heal her up because her immune system and body was weak so her skin couldn't heal and the wound tunnelled all the way down to the bone in a matter of like 3-4 days.
So the nurse calls at 8PM and says she can't come in tomorrow because she needs to have surgery done on her throat. I don't know what was up with her and I don't know if it was an emergency because apparently she had been complaining about her throat for a while. And she said "I'll have my daughter call (the company) tomorrow morning." Well my mom can only work on Tuesdays and Thursdays because the rest of the week she is taking care of my grandmother (which is a full time job on its own, you know?) Problem is.. calling the company in the morning when my mom needs to get to work on Tuesdays at 9 would be way too late. And my grandmother needs to be turned and looked after; you can't just leave her alone cause she can't move basically from the neck down. So we had to call last night to get someone in even though the other nurse should have called the company before she even called us about her situation. We have had this one nurse for a long while (over 5 years) because she is good.. but it's these situations when people don't understand the overwhelming stress it creates for others that it just gets on my nerves a little. I'll be moving to the UK so what if I can't be there to look after my grandmother until the replacement nurse can get there? And homes are terrible and she wouldn't be getting the care she needs; for example, the medication makes her have a reflex with her tongue.. and if she was at a home they would basically starve her because they'd think she'd be spitting it out and they can't "force feed her".. stuff like that. I know first hand. Homes are great for those elderly who are capable.. but in our case it wouldn't be good. She needs people there for her and not to be laid in front of a wall or tv. Imagine if you couldn't move and you were forced to watch the news channel in another language for hours on end. No way. So we do what we can to take care of her.
But sometimes it just bothers me that people can't.. think. Like think "maybe people are relying on me to come on time so that they can be on time for work too." Like "maybe I shouldn't leave it for the morning so others don't have to be up worrying all night and losing sleep.." Like the replacement came in and it's amazing that she came but thank god I was there to supervise. I'm scared for the times that there can't be supervision.. like.. for example I mushed up one of those nutri baby-cookies in a bit of milk for my grandma for her to feed to her and she grabs the bigger spoon and can clearly see that it's like.. how do I explain it.. not coming off the spoon onto her mouth because of the ridges. Okay that's fine, "Let me grab a different spoon" I say.. so I do. And my grandma finishes.. so does she not think that she might want a sip of water to clear her throat? Like.. does she not think "Does she need to be turned/ do you need help turning her?" I mean aren't they supposed to be trained specialists and where is the consideration? I know it's just little things.. but it honestly makes all the difference. "Should I think to check if her catheter is full?" "Should I think to check if she needs a tissue?" I mean simple things that a mother would think of for her child.
The other nurse thinks of these things.. so it's so crucial that we don't lose her.. but at the same time she's been like on a crazy tangent lately with unexpectedly not showing up or showing up late or calling at the last minute or whatever.. and it's been really difficult. And we have another nurse who comes in besides her in the afternoon on tuesdays, thursdays, and saturday to take over a bit and she is like a godsend. Like I just really wish we had people that were passionate about helping others like she is.. and who are as caring.. We don't need nurses there who just sit on the couch and decide to do nothing and then when we come home they pretend to look busy. Just it's upsetting and it feels like the world's going downhill because people are so privileged that they don't want to actually do their job at their job.. and their job consists of "make sure she's drinking, and change her diaper, and move her so she doesn't get more bedsores."
And honestly the nurses who are there to make a difference are like angels. Honestly like godsend to us. But it just sucks so much because they are so few and far between.. and the government has been making it increasingly difficult to care for elderly at home. Yeah you can say "oh but you can get ___ checks from the government and pension money" but everything adds up from diapers to the VAC machine and everything. And they wanted to cut nursing hours too.. and it's just.. well anyone who's from around here who is taking care of someone they know knows this. I can't get into too much depth and all on a silly pokemon forum. But I use this blog more than other blogs and I just wanted to write this out for myself to vent and get it out there. I'm pissed that the liberal party won because of all the crap they've been pulling with tax hikes and HST and raising public transit and hydro bills.. but there's nothing I can do but really hope that they can pull something through to make it easier for people in a situation like ours.
Yeah this is a jumbled mess, but I just needed it out there and off my mind.
Yesterday was thanksgiving.. and yesterday we also got a call from the nurse who comes in every Tuesday and Thursday to look after my grandmother. My grandmother is 89 and she had a stroke 10 years ago which left her basically bed-ridden. Recently we've also not been able to put her into her wheelchair because of a large bed wound that formed one month that she was very ill and her skin became weak. However we've been keeping up with it and just got the VAC machine in (a near impossible feat) so it can help heal her up because her immune system and body was weak so her skin couldn't heal and the wound tunnelled all the way down to the bone in a matter of like 3-4 days.
So the nurse calls at 8PM and says she can't come in tomorrow because she needs to have surgery done on her throat. I don't know what was up with her and I don't know if it was an emergency because apparently she had been complaining about her throat for a while. And she said "I'll have my daughter call (the company) tomorrow morning." Well my mom can only work on Tuesdays and Thursdays because the rest of the week she is taking care of my grandmother (which is a full time job on its own, you know?) Problem is.. calling the company in the morning when my mom needs to get to work on Tuesdays at 9 would be way too late. And my grandmother needs to be turned and looked after; you can't just leave her alone cause she can't move basically from the neck down. So we had to call last night to get someone in even though the other nurse should have called the company before she even called us about her situation. We have had this one nurse for a long while (over 5 years) because she is good.. but it's these situations when people don't understand the overwhelming stress it creates for others that it just gets on my nerves a little. I'll be moving to the UK so what if I can't be there to look after my grandmother until the replacement nurse can get there? And homes are terrible and she wouldn't be getting the care she needs; for example, the medication makes her have a reflex with her tongue.. and if she was at a home they would basically starve her because they'd think she'd be spitting it out and they can't "force feed her".. stuff like that. I know first hand. Homes are great for those elderly who are capable.. but in our case it wouldn't be good. She needs people there for her and not to be laid in front of a wall or tv. Imagine if you couldn't move and you were forced to watch the news channel in another language for hours on end. No way. So we do what we can to take care of her.
But sometimes it just bothers me that people can't.. think. Like think "maybe people are relying on me to come on time so that they can be on time for work too." Like "maybe I shouldn't leave it for the morning so others don't have to be up worrying all night and losing sleep.." Like the replacement came in and it's amazing that she came but thank god I was there to supervise. I'm scared for the times that there can't be supervision.. like.. for example I mushed up one of those nutri baby-cookies in a bit of milk for my grandma for her to feed to her and she grabs the bigger spoon and can clearly see that it's like.. how do I explain it.. not coming off the spoon onto her mouth because of the ridges. Okay that's fine, "Let me grab a different spoon" I say.. so I do. And my grandma finishes.. so does she not think that she might want a sip of water to clear her throat? Like.. does she not think "Does she need to be turned/ do you need help turning her?" I mean aren't they supposed to be trained specialists and where is the consideration? I know it's just little things.. but it honestly makes all the difference. "Should I think to check if her catheter is full?" "Should I think to check if she needs a tissue?" I mean simple things that a mother would think of for her child.
The other nurse thinks of these things.. so it's so crucial that we don't lose her.. but at the same time she's been like on a crazy tangent lately with unexpectedly not showing up or showing up late or calling at the last minute or whatever.. and it's been really difficult. And we have another nurse who comes in besides her in the afternoon on tuesdays, thursdays, and saturday to take over a bit and she is like a godsend. Like I just really wish we had people that were passionate about helping others like she is.. and who are as caring.. We don't need nurses there who just sit on the couch and decide to do nothing and then when we come home they pretend to look busy. Just it's upsetting and it feels like the world's going downhill because people are so privileged that they don't want to actually do their job at their job.. and their job consists of "make sure she's drinking, and change her diaper, and move her so she doesn't get more bedsores."
And honestly the nurses who are there to make a difference are like angels. Honestly like godsend to us. But it just sucks so much because they are so few and far between.. and the government has been making it increasingly difficult to care for elderly at home. Yeah you can say "oh but you can get ___ checks from the government and pension money" but everything adds up from diapers to the VAC machine and everything. And they wanted to cut nursing hours too.. and it's just.. well anyone who's from around here who is taking care of someone they know knows this. I can't get into too much depth and all on a silly pokemon forum. But I use this blog more than other blogs and I just wanted to write this out for myself to vent and get it out there. I'm pissed that the liberal party won because of all the crap they've been pulling with tax hikes and HST and raising public transit and hydro bills.. but there's nothing I can do but really hope that they can pull something through to make it easier for people in a situation like ours.
Yeah this is a jumbled mess, but I just needed it out there and off my mind.
