The preliminaries
Before I get into the substance of this post, let me just mention that I have been busy working on the website. I am preparing a second Freebie, growing my Pinterest followers, getting more Pinterest groupboards, learning HTML, and watching election returns. Life is busy. I need to take some time for fun, so I’m writing this blog post.
The five day aide
I had an aide for five days. Right after my shower she comes into my bedroom and tells me she needs to go, and she wants to be paid. I am disabled and I am not a bank. I have no money. I tell her to go back to my wife for money because I have none. Apparently, she believes she did a lot for us. This is the job.
How time intensive am I?
I frankly, am not time intensive. Doing a diaper change takes about 7 minutes. The patient lift takes about 5 minutes. She may have to give me the bowl with my medications. But then I take my medications. I figure out which medications I take and when. She has nothing to do with that. When I’m finished with the medications, she takes the bowl of medications and puts the bowl on the black table two feet from me. That takes at most 3 seconds.
What if I take a shower?
If I’m taking a shower, then she wheels me in the shower chair into the bathroom. She plugs in my electric shaver. I do the rest until I need to go into the shower. I shave myself. I clean my shaver myself. I clean my glasses myself. I brush my teeth myself. I use a fluoride rinse myself. Then I call for the aide to wheel me into the shower. This takes half a minute. I take a shower myself.
Where is the shampoo?
She may or may not get shampoo, sometimes it is already in the shower, and hands me the shower spray. This takes maybe three seconds on a bad day. I shower myself and I can even do between my toes in the shower. After the shower, she takes me out of the shower, wipes my back with a towel, because it is not easy for me to wipe my back in a shower chair.
What watch?
I dry the rest of my body with a towel. I put on my watch, which hopefully I took off before the shower, I have taken it off by myself while in the shower. It is water resistant, not waterproof.
Back to the bedroom
She wheels me into the bedroom, it is easier to wheel me in backwards in and out of the room and it is much faster to wheel me in and out of the bathroom backwards. Then it’s 5 minutes in the patient lift and a 7 minute diaper change. After that it’s 2 minutes applying some cream to my legs. And that’s it.
Light cleaning
The rest of the job is light cleaning. If not for the light cleaning, the aide would have nothing to do for the rest of the day. Personally, I don’t think this is too much to ask of someone.
It’s just too much and turn up the Smartphone
Anyway, she thought it was too much and left after my wife paid her. Earlier my wife found her down the basement with earphones in her ears listening to her smartphone. How she was going to hear me call her from the shower upstairs while she had the earphones in her ears listening to the smartphone, I do not know. Anyway, we are now looking for a new aide and adjusting our schedules.
Driver to take me to the dentist
I need to go to the dentist on Wednesday and we called the driver to confirm his availability. Three weeks ago I had told the driver that I would need him that Wednesday, and he told me that he would be able to drive me on that date. We call to confirm and sure enough he says he is leaving the country. He will not be able to drive me. We are looking for a new driver. We are trying to adjust our schedules.