CAREGIVING: One of our new aides, Hope came this morning. Monday was her first visit to give Kathy a shower and get her dressed. Today, she stayed for three hours of companion care and did some cleaning after getting Kathy ready.
She sat with Kathy while I worked on a newsletter project in my actual office, upstairs. It was nice to work on my monitor instead of the Macbook. This was the day I usually try to get out of the house, but I stayed around because I had actual paying work. (I was also wiped out from yesterdays events.) Since I have the little video camera set up, I checked on her from time to time. The shower help is new, even though I have talked about it on this blog for a long time. It took a lot of arranging through Greater Springfield Senior Services, and the agencies they work through, to get it set up. It took a long time to find a worker too. Hope is great. Fran was great also, but she was strictly a companion level aide. She was not certified to help move Kathy or help her go to the bathroom or anything like that. Apparently, she hurt herself on the job and they wanted to find someone else for us. This is working well so far. Marty my basset, loves having her because she has a lot of animals at home. She has two labs, some cats, a rabbit and flying squirrels of some sort. And kids.
They have authorized Kathy to have four personal care visits of an hour each and the companion care time of three hours. So, for today, Hope was here for the shower, plus the three hours. She doesn’t work Friday or on the weekend, so a different aide will be doing the showers on those days. A nurse was supposed to come on Monday to help set up a “treatment plan”. That means they see if we have the correct equipment and safety stuff and help plan out what the aides will do. The nurse was out sick both Monday and Wednesday so we had to wing it. I showed Hope how I’ve done the showers, but encouraged her to change whatever needed changing. I learned a lot helping her do it.
Some little suggestions really helped:
1. Putting a wash cloth on the shower bench so that Kathy can slide her butt a little easier.
2. Dressing and undressing her in the bathroom. Even though it is really cramped in there, it is warm and there is a bar for her to grab. She can stand for brief periods while you pull up her pants or rub barrier cream on her.
3. Using her big wedge cushion from the bed on the futon to prop her up instead of ten pillows.
4. She saw how I clean Kathy’s gums with strips of gauze or paper towel and suggested I get a baby gum massager. So, I’ll get one of those to try.
5. She is going to try to get the personal care time (showers and dressing) increased to an hour and a half. It is taking her the full hour to get her ready even with my help. And today Kathy was fairly mobile. On days when Kathy is having a bad day, Hope wouldn’t be able to get everything done before she left for her next client. When she called her office she discussed that and getting a nurse to come over.
I told Hope a little bit about Huntington’s Disease. They never seem to tell the aides any information about anything. Until recently the scheduler at the agency didn’t know Kathy was in a wheelchair or what she was suffering from. While I was working upstairs Hope looked up Huntington’s on her phone and read a little about it. She said if Kathy is spending most of her time lying down we might want to think about just getting a hospital bed. She said all the contortions I’m going through would be easier: Raising her head so she can breathe better; or raising the bed for a sponge bath. At some point I’ll have to. Probably pretty soon. There is a part of me that wants to keep the house looking as normal as I can for as long as I can. She was also asking if Kathy gets up at night to go to the bathroom. She said putting the commode chair right by the bed might save work. I could just stand her up by the side of the bed and plunk her down on the seat to pee. That might be next anyway since getting her chair into the bathroom is very tight. When the bedroom was upstairs she refused to talk about having a commode chair in the bedroom. She is getting more compliant, now.