Home health aide
In the first quarter of this year, like a lot of people, I was looking to make certain changes. As I was unable to live primarily on a multi district substitute teacher's income, I took a second job in order to make a living. During the fall semester of my first year of substitute teaching, I was working at a group home for the developmentally disabled (most weekday mornings and every other weekend on during the day shift). It was an alright job - I was a babysitter for 12 mild/moderate adults who were living semi-independently and just needed some minimal to medium assistance in doing everyday tasks (driving a car, grocery shopping, cooking, etc.). The primary thing they needed was to have someone pass out their meds first thing in the morning before they left for work on the weekdays or when they got up on the weekends. Financially it was profitable, but as I would find out in working in the social work world, things would change like that. If you are working on a PRN basis (as in an optional situation), six months will go by and they will simply forget about you. If you are working on a part time or semi permanent one, such as the job at the group home, they will treat you badly after six months and then force you to quit. Which I did. For the fall semester 2017, in the hopes of making bank like I did at the group home, I took another social work job as a job coach training special people to work jobs (retail, office, restaurant, landscaping, cleaning, etc.) I learned quite a bit with this job in how to handle certain situations with special people specifically as it relates to work behaviors, of which I am happy for; but, like the above noted phrase as it pertains to social work and the PRN status, it simply vanished. Plus as it was not a lucrative as I would have liked financially, I would go off to have another adventure in caregiving by becoming a home health aide.
Many have heard an old saying that being a teacher is very similar to that of being a nurse. This is especially true if you are working with people with special needs as they have needs similar to that of what a nursing recipient would require (toileting, feeding, etc.). In a clinical setting this job is called nursing, in a school setting this is called being a paraprofessional. Typical students, be they little, big or adult students, sometimes have needs which are similar to that of caregiving that a nurse or paraprofessional can provide for them in some situations, which are few and far between the older they are. In this thinking, deciding to take another turn for more experience as well as more creative things to put on my resume, I decided to become a home health aide. A fellow former coworker from the group home networked me to a home health agency. After passing the online tests, I became certified as a home health aide and received my client assignment.
The client was surprising. Her house was barely a hop, skip and a jump away from my house, where she lived alone with her two cats. I rang the bell and expected it to be answered by an elderly woman but instead she was only a few years older than me. She told me she was disabled due to brain aneurysms and a few past car accidents, otherwise she was mobile and not confined to a wheelchair. I had agreed to be her aide on a temporary basis, but then contacted the coordinator and said I wanted to be this woman's aide. So for the next several weeks, I put the multi district substitute teaching on hold and decided to do this. I needed a break from that anyway.
The honeymoon period wore off REAL QUICK with this job. There are probably millions of tales out there having to do with the eccentricities of dealing with the public, but many under this particular file folder have to do with caring for more elderly people who are not very cognizant and it's nonchalant and not as dramatic. This client, however, was quite hysterical. When I walked into the house I knew she was a hoarder based on the piles and piles of garbage (papers, bags of trash, etc.) in plain sight. I said the first thing we're going to do is organize the piles of old magazines on the fireplace and pitch them out, which she was happy to do because she wanted to get rid of those for a long time. There was a giant stack of papers on her kitchen table which were a variety of bills and statements. She would sit down and get to work on them and said she was going to now pay these bills because she was behind the eight ball with them now. Then she would forget about them and start screaming at me because I didn't feed the cat first thing when I came in that morning. Unfortunately this is how she seemed to operate, which was a combination of the brain damage from her aneurysm and her drug addiction. I found tons of empty prescription bottles around the house, both in a plastic tub which were to be taken to a recycling center (wherever that is/was), as well as the ones she was popping all day (which were narcotics). She also had bottles of over the counter vitamins, some of which she claimed she paid hundreds of dollars for yet the seals were not broken and the receipts in the boxes in which they came were years old. Then she spent most of her time smoking weed in the other room. I was okay with that as long as she didn't do it in front of me, otherwise that was not my business what she did with her time. And I told her that.
I was not biting the hand that fed me by any means. While I brought my laptop in and watched a lot of Netflix all day and took care of a lot of business that I would not have been able to otherwise during the day, I did my job with her. I did her laundry, cleaned up the kitchen dishes and fed her cats as instructed. Fortunately she did not require any personal care (ex. toileting), and when she decided that she was going to actually do something with herself, she would come out and go through her bills. Much of the time was spent alone on my part, and I kept myself occupied. While health care aides in general are known for their abuse and deception, I promised her that I was not going to steal her things or take advantage of her like a lot do to the elderly and disabled. Which I did not, so she could relax with my being in her house.
Our relationship went through dramatic ups and downs, mostly due to her brain damage. Half the time she was not cognizant, either because she was self medicating or because her condition was throwing her a curve. Sometimes she would be clearly in a cloud, I could tell by looking in her eyes. She would retreat into the bedroom and would never get out of bed for hours, other times she would go into the living room and scream at me to come in and vacuum the floor. When I took out the vacuum and gave the carpet a few swipes, she would say I wasn't doing it correctly and she would do it. When I would leave the room and return a few minutes later, I would find her asleep on the couch and not bother her. Sometimes she would sit down at the kitchen table and say she was going to start going through this enormous pile of papers and pay the bills. Some of these papers were statements (car insurance companies, Medicaid, etc.) which she told me to file in the file cabinet next to me near the front door, which I did. Like the vacuuming in the living room, she would eventually get tired of it or get distracted. I learned not to order her around like I would a class (either as a group or individual basis) like I was when teaching, she would scream back at me that she didn't like being told what to do and she had a handle on it. I would just roll over and do whatever she wanted. If she wanted to throw a tantrum about not finding a notebook with dogs on it which supposedly contained her tax receipts for the last twenty years, I would just say I never saw said notebook. Which I didn't. When she told me to open a drawer in the utility room because she had to get into it, I didn't ask questions. She said her family had come and glued the drawer shut on her because they were all a bunch of crooks. When I got it open and inside I found a key ring and three books of matches, she didn't say a word. And neither did I.
This chapter ended quicker than I thought it would. I had taken the day off in the middle of the week because I had a dentist appointment the next day. The last thing I said to her before I left was to remind her once again that I was not going to be there tomorrow, make sure that she kept questionable things out of the way for whoever it was that was going to take my place the next day. She agreed. The next day while out and about I was texting the coordinator about in service codes to put onto their website to keep my certification currant, she texted me that services were canceled for the client and not to attempt to contact or return to her place again. When at the office a week or two later to sign some papers, I decided to ask the coordinator exactly what happened, if she could tell me that is. She said her insurance would not cover a home health aide. True? Probably not. She was probably caught with the drugs or leaned into the replacement like she did me. After that I was not assigned a regular client again, I was only given a few odd jobs here and there evenings with an elderly woman at an assisted living facility. She was pleasant enough and I enjoyed being with her, but the company wasn't assigning me anyone new on a regular basis. Couple that with realizing the company itself was rather disorganized, I decided to close the book, ghost on them and move on. At some point the phone stopped ringing, I await them to send my final paycheck in the mail.
So my home health aide career ended rather quickly, but I'm sure I am not the first person this ever happened to. Similar to the social work world, these organizations also just ghost and move on from you after a few weeks/months. I paid to get it on my resume pretty much, and yet at the same time I could have lied about it as well. It is, like a lot of things in nursing, rather depressing. No love is lost between me and that first client, some was between me and the woman I was with at the assisted living facility for a few days, but it's what it is. If anything, I just felt in knowing yet once again that the disabled and the elderly are in a bad situation in life. Their lives are nothing but an endless train of people through a revolving door. And I was one of them. Moving on.
Many have heard an old saying that being a teacher is very similar to that of being a nurse. This is especially true if you are working with people with special needs as they have needs similar to that of what a nursing recipient would require (toileting, feeding, etc.). In a clinical setting this job is called nursing, in a school setting this is called being a paraprofessional. Typical students, be they little, big or adult students, sometimes have needs which are similar to that of caregiving that a nurse or paraprofessional can provide for them in some situations, which are few and far between the older they are. In this thinking, deciding to take another turn for more experience as well as more creative things to put on my resume, I decided to become a home health aide. A fellow former coworker from the group home networked me to a home health agency. After passing the online tests, I became certified as a home health aide and received my client assignment.
The client was surprising. Her house was barely a hop, skip and a jump away from my house, where she lived alone with her two cats. I rang the bell and expected it to be answered by an elderly woman but instead she was only a few years older than me. She told me she was disabled due to brain aneurysms and a few past car accidents, otherwise she was mobile and not confined to a wheelchair. I had agreed to be her aide on a temporary basis, but then contacted the coordinator and said I wanted to be this woman's aide. So for the next several weeks, I put the multi district substitute teaching on hold and decided to do this. I needed a break from that anyway.
The honeymoon period wore off REAL QUICK with this job. There are probably millions of tales out there having to do with the eccentricities of dealing with the public, but many under this particular file folder have to do with caring for more elderly people who are not very cognizant and it's nonchalant and not as dramatic. This client, however, was quite hysterical. When I walked into the house I knew she was a hoarder based on the piles and piles of garbage (papers, bags of trash, etc.) in plain sight. I said the first thing we're going to do is organize the piles of old magazines on the fireplace and pitch them out, which she was happy to do because she wanted to get rid of those for a long time. There was a giant stack of papers on her kitchen table which were a variety of bills and statements. She would sit down and get to work on them and said she was going to now pay these bills because she was behind the eight ball with them now. Then she would forget about them and start screaming at me because I didn't feed the cat first thing when I came in that morning. Unfortunately this is how she seemed to operate, which was a combination of the brain damage from her aneurysm and her drug addiction. I found tons of empty prescription bottles around the house, both in a plastic tub which were to be taken to a recycling center (wherever that is/was), as well as the ones she was popping all day (which were narcotics). She also had bottles of over the counter vitamins, some of which she claimed she paid hundreds of dollars for yet the seals were not broken and the receipts in the boxes in which they came were years old. Then she spent most of her time smoking weed in the other room. I was okay with that as long as she didn't do it in front of me, otherwise that was not my business what she did with her time. And I told her that.
I was not biting the hand that fed me by any means. While I brought my laptop in and watched a lot of Netflix all day and took care of a lot of business that I would not have been able to otherwise during the day, I did my job with her. I did her laundry, cleaned up the kitchen dishes and fed her cats as instructed. Fortunately she did not require any personal care (ex. toileting), and when she decided that she was going to actually do something with herself, she would come out and go through her bills. Much of the time was spent alone on my part, and I kept myself occupied. While health care aides in general are known for their abuse and deception, I promised her that I was not going to steal her things or take advantage of her like a lot do to the elderly and disabled. Which I did not, so she could relax with my being in her house.
Our relationship went through dramatic ups and downs, mostly due to her brain damage. Half the time she was not cognizant, either because she was self medicating or because her condition was throwing her a curve. Sometimes she would be clearly in a cloud, I could tell by looking in her eyes. She would retreat into the bedroom and would never get out of bed for hours, other times she would go into the living room and scream at me to come in and vacuum the floor. When I took out the vacuum and gave the carpet a few swipes, she would say I wasn't doing it correctly and she would do it. When I would leave the room and return a few minutes later, I would find her asleep on the couch and not bother her. Sometimes she would sit down at the kitchen table and say she was going to start going through this enormous pile of papers and pay the bills. Some of these papers were statements (car insurance companies, Medicaid, etc.) which she told me to file in the file cabinet next to me near the front door, which I did. Like the vacuuming in the living room, she would eventually get tired of it or get distracted. I learned not to order her around like I would a class (either as a group or individual basis) like I was when teaching, she would scream back at me that she didn't like being told what to do and she had a handle on it. I would just roll over and do whatever she wanted. If she wanted to throw a tantrum about not finding a notebook with dogs on it which supposedly contained her tax receipts for the last twenty years, I would just say I never saw said notebook. Which I didn't. When she told me to open a drawer in the utility room because she had to get into it, I didn't ask questions. She said her family had come and glued the drawer shut on her because they were all a bunch of crooks. When I got it open and inside I found a key ring and three books of matches, she didn't say a word. And neither did I.
This chapter ended quicker than I thought it would. I had taken the day off in the middle of the week because I had a dentist appointment the next day. The last thing I said to her before I left was to remind her once again that I was not going to be there tomorrow, make sure that she kept questionable things out of the way for whoever it was that was going to take my place the next day. She agreed. The next day while out and about I was texting the coordinator about in service codes to put onto their website to keep my certification currant, she texted me that services were canceled for the client and not to attempt to contact or return to her place again. When at the office a week or two later to sign some papers, I decided to ask the coordinator exactly what happened, if she could tell me that is. She said her insurance would not cover a home health aide. True? Probably not. She was probably caught with the drugs or leaned into the replacement like she did me. After that I was not assigned a regular client again, I was only given a few odd jobs here and there evenings with an elderly woman at an assisted living facility. She was pleasant enough and I enjoyed being with her, but the company wasn't assigning me anyone new on a regular basis. Couple that with realizing the company itself was rather disorganized, I decided to close the book, ghost on them and move on. At some point the phone stopped ringing, I await them to send my final paycheck in the mail.
So my home health aide career ended rather quickly, but I'm sure I am not the first person this ever happened to. Similar to the social work world, these organizations also just ghost and move on from you after a few weeks/months. I paid to get it on my resume pretty much, and yet at the same time I could have lied about it as well. It is, like a lot of things in nursing, rather depressing. No love is lost between me and that first client, some was between me and the woman I was with at the assisted living facility for a few days, but it's what it is. If anything, I just felt in knowing yet once again that the disabled and the elderly are in a bad situation in life. Their lives are nothing but an endless train of people through a revolving door. And I was one of them. Moving on.
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