August 11, 2005

• Summer is going too fast!  I still have a list of things I want to
  do before school starts and  I’m not at all sure it is
  possible.  Top of my list is to go to Cleveland to see a
  particularly strange showing at the Cleveland Science Museum and to
  tour the Rock and Roll  Hall of Fame.  Gas prices are a
  consideration.  As well as time. 

  Roger and I visited Buckeye (a vocational school) last night and he
  will be attending this year.  He will be in a special program this
  year to get him caught up academically.  It also seems as if it
  might be a fun program as well.  They learn to use different
  woodworking tools and such and then they make small projects such as
  birdhouses and the like.  Then they work on parade floats. 
  In the spring they design and make the backdrops for the Buckeye prom.
  He will have a chance to audit three different classes that are
  offered.  Right now he wants to be in Graphic Arts.  This
  will give him a chance to sample a couple other programs. 

  My Boomer tore a hole in the pool last week and I finished taking it
  down tonight.  It was sad.  I got such pleasure from relaxing
  in that pool.  There are days I am willing to give that silly dog
  away.  He’s just a puppy, he’s just a puppy, he’s just…..

  I went to visit my granny in the nursing home the other day.  She
  is well taken care of there.  The thing is, she doesn’t recognize
  many of us any more and I would  like the chance to keep my
  promise I made her when she helped me pay for nursing school. 
  That was to take care of her in her old age. This is going to sound
  really cold, but I couldn’t do it while she recognized me as  her
  granddaughter.  It was way too personal.  She was a demanding
  matriarch  and everything had to be done her way.  And she
  liked to do everything the hard way.   She isn’t so demanding
  with her caretakers now that her Alzheimers has progressed.  She
  is still hard on my  aunt,  whom she still  recognizes
  from time to time.  I would like to help take some of the burden
  off my aunt, too.  She has her hands full with my uncle’s poor
  health as well as her own. 

  So I am suggesting to my aunt and my mother that they consider moving
  her to the nursing home where I work.  It will cost almost half of
  what they are paying now and I will see her at least 3 times a week and
  she will be just 6 minutes away.  It will be almost the same
  travelling distance for my aunt and my mom. My boss is for it, she says
  she had her mother-in-law brought there for the end of her life and it
  worked out great.  I feel right about it. 

  It was cute when I visited her.  She was sitting in the dining
  room and I said, “Hi Granny. “  I could tell she didn’t know me,
  but was being polite.
  Then I asked if she remembered Roger, who went with me. She smiled and
  said, “He’s the one that set off the bells.”  She was referring to
  the very first time Rog visited her in the nursing home, he went out a
  door to go to the garden and set off an alarm.   She almost
  always remembers him.  She doesn’t remember being married to my
  grandfather and  frequently forgets my mother, but she remembers
  Rog!

  Right now she only remembers her parents and siblings as they were in
  her teens.  She has a picture of her parents at her bedside and it
  comforts her.  She has short periods of remembering recent things
  but nothing significant.  It is sad in one way, but in another it
  makes her living arrangements in a nursing home a little easier for her
  to bear.  She was fiercely independent at home. 

  My job at the group home is changing.  I only work on a casual
  basis.  That translates to I only have to work once every five
  times they call.  The full time nurse is quitting and the part
  time nurse doesn’t want the position.  So there’s lots of time
  open.  I would do it if it weren’t such a demanding
  position.  But there are too many hoops they want you to jump
  through just to give meds to ten people.  If it were only a matter
  of going in and giving them their meds it would be different.  But
  because they are MRDD it can’t be that easy.  You have to call
  them to the med room then watch as they punch out their own
  medication.  Then as they are taking it, we are supposed to be
  explaining why they are taking it.  If they do not have the
  ability to punch out their own meds, we do it then have them tell us
  why they are taking it or put on some cream they are ordered or stir
  some addititve into their water. The idea is that they are supposed to
  be learning something from this.  One gentleman takes at least ten
  minutes to convince him he need to take his meds, then another five or
  so to get it down him without him choking.  Once the meds are
  given to everyone, then there is the paperwork.  If someone should
  happen to get a bruise and we know how it happens we have to fill out
  an incident report, copy it, fax it to at least three different
  numbers.  Then notify each of those people, as well as a couple
  more, by voice mail or talking to them on the telephone.  Heaven
  forbid we don’t know how the bruise happens because then an
  investigation is started and in addition to the charting I have already
  done on  the incident and the incident report I have written on, I
  have to make a written statement whether I was there or not, if I
  worked in the 24 hours preceding the incident.  then there are
  doctors appointments.  The doctor that takes care of these people
  is in a city that is nearly 25 miles away.  It is not easy to get
  a doctor that will take care of 10 MRDD patients and accept whatever
  medicaid/ medicare payments he gets.  We have went through at
  least five different doctors in the past three years.  Then their
  care must be agreed on by a special team that is supposed to be looking
  out for their best interests.  The doctors have been invited to
  these meetings in the past and have declined.  Then they get
  snippy when the team decides against their recommendations.  It is
  not a good environment to work in on a full time basis.  I know
  … I did it for over a year and was practically living there.  I
  don’t want to go there again. 
  Well, I guess that is enough bitching for today. I will now try to make the rounds and leave some comments.

  • 9:32 pm
  • 11 Comments