"I thought Lily's (*) legs were feeling a little cold so I got her some trousers...."
It was a simple line in the daily notes section of our client folder, kept at Lily's house. We each write what has happened during our visit in the daily notes section and there is a column for anything which requires attention or we want the next carer on shift to be particularly aware of or action.
The same carer had written a few weeks earlier: "I've arranged for some of Lily's skirts to be altered to button up the front to make dressing and undressing easier."
I smiled as I gathered together Lily's clothes for the day - including a pair of trousers from the selection we now had for her. My colleague had thought about Lily's needs and how we could make life a little more comfortable for her and had acted on it. The same with having Lily's skirts altered. Due to her deteriorating condition, most of Lily's care when it comes to dressing and undressing is now undertaken on her bed by having her skirts made so they button up the front they were a lot easier to put on and necessitated very little moving Lily around in order to dress her. It was thoughtful and very caring of my colleague to not only notice the issues we were facing but to find such a fantastic solution. She had gone above and beyond her role in her duty of care to Lily.
Lily's personal care and dressing requires two carers. I was on a double up visit with my colleague mentioned above and as we were washing Lily she was holding my hand, Lily looked at my colleague at the other side of the bed and said: "You're wonderful, you are. Tell her she's wonderful, Sharon. You are all wonderful, every single one of you. You take such good care of me."
It was totally out of the blue and unexpected. Lily had a twinkle in her eye as she said it. Moments like this are very rewarding. These are the moments that keep us going when sometimes the going gets a little tough and demands on us and our time are high.
Domiciliary care and care givers are often in the news at the moment and receive an lot of negative press. Often with good reason but there are companies, such as ours, who go the extra mile to ensure we, where possible, exceed our client's expectations. I am relatively new to home care giving and researched carefully several different companies in the area before deciding which one I would like to try to gain employment with. I thought about my own parents and what I would like and look for in a care giving company should I have the need to employ one. I chose carefully a company who I thought would enable me to give the care I would want for my own loved ones.
I'm happy to say that I chose well. The lady at the helm of our company is passionate about the standard and level of care we offer and the staff she employs are all hand picked by her: people on which she can entrust her reputation. In short I'm learning from the very best available people in home care. What it means in reality is ladies like Lily are looked after by us all as if they were a much loved part of our own family and that feels good - not only for them but for us too.
(*) Lily'a name has been changed in order to protect her identity and privacy.
Sunday, 7 December 2014
Friday, 21 November 2014
Today I Made A Little Old Lady Cry....
Today was a special day. Today was the day I made a little old lady cry. I was pleased she cried. She cried because she was happy with something I had done. It's ok to make little old ladies cry under such circumstances I believe. Allow me to explain...
The lady in question is one I have the honour of caring for as a small part of a team of carers. I spend 2 - 3 days a week looking after her. Amongst a few other things she suffers from a condition which affects her memory. A few weeks ago I noticed in her file a booklet entitled "My Life Story". There was hardly any entries in it since none of us knew her life story and she herself was unable to remember a lot of it. So there was a picture of her, her husband and child along with very sketchy details such as her birthday and her wedding date and the birthday of her child. There was the odd photo in it but only a recent one of her and one of her in her late teens. She was beautiful - and still is. It wasn't enough but it was all we had since neither she nor her husband could remember much and her husband really didn't see the point of such a book.
I made it my business to find out all I could about the beautiful young lady now in the twilight years of her life. What I found out filled the booklet and some. I went to talk to her sister, her son, her husband and her friends. I asked them about her life and little anecdotes which I could retell in the booklet.
They all painted a picture about how my charge was a stunningly beautiful young lady who had many potential suitors chasing her, one in particular was a handsome young soldier. My lady was dainty - a talented dancer with the smallest size 2 feet. She could rock and roll with the best of them, jive and twist. She could also glide around a ballroom and was gifted with being able to dance the perfect quick-step and other ballroom dances.
In her younger days she used to cycle with her best friend and her sister from the village in which she lived just outside of her local market town to all the surrounding villages attending the local village dances. During the war years if planes were flying over they all had to switch off their bike lights and cycle in the still darkness of the night time in order to not alert enemy planes to their position.
A young soldier noticed her in a ballroom at a dance and made a beeline for her. He was stricken by her beauty and elegance. She danced with him and then, realising he had "two left feet" and couldn't dance discreetly excused herself. He couldn't keep his eyes off her and used to ask her to dance whenever they met. She wasn't so keen. She used to say to her sister and her friend "If that soldier is coming for me keep him away because he can't dance!" He persisted and now 56 years later they are still happily married and hold hands when they sit next to each other on an evening and during the day.
They told me about her first job and how she used to cycle to work. If she hadn't had a bike it would have been a 3 mile walk! They shared about her wedding day and who was there. I learnt all about the day her son was born and how her husband had registered his name incorrectly in his excitement omitting to give him his own Christian name as a middle name and how annoyed she was that he had forgotten to do this.
I wrote about the day she went with her sister and mother to the fun fair which came to the local town market place every year and how her mother had been spun off one of the bobbing horses on the carousel. I heard about the day her son had fallen off a wall whilst on holiday and dislocated his arm and about the many holidays they took I wrote it all down and between us we documented what we could of her life story. I learnt about how she hated school but loved swimming and would go to school in order to go to the swimming lessons. I heard about how she loved military whist drives and domino drives and what a good player she was. We wrote about the cabaret shows she used to love to go and see and taking her family to the pantomime.
She was a very clever lady who ran a tight ship of a home and controlled all the family budget and managed the house - which ran like clockwork.
It was a very humbling experience, one which made me think about my own life and what, if anything, someone would write if documenting my life story. I'm not at all sure that it would make such good reading as her does! That made me feel a little sad but the thought that no-one would bother to do it for me made me even sadder!
Today was the final piece of the picture I had built about her. Today was the day that we went through her family photos together and chose pictures to match her story and then I read it to her.
It was then that she cried. She called for her husband to come and hear it. Her face lit up with excitement and she kept saying "that's all true, I remember that's what happened. How did you know all this? I can't believe it but i can remember that." over and over again. It was then that I realised that today, at least, I had done a really good job.
The lady in question is one I have the honour of caring for as a small part of a team of carers. I spend 2 - 3 days a week looking after her. Amongst a few other things she suffers from a condition which affects her memory. A few weeks ago I noticed in her file a booklet entitled "My Life Story". There was hardly any entries in it since none of us knew her life story and she herself was unable to remember a lot of it. So there was a picture of her, her husband and child along with very sketchy details such as her birthday and her wedding date and the birthday of her child. There was the odd photo in it but only a recent one of her and one of her in her late teens. She was beautiful - and still is. It wasn't enough but it was all we had since neither she nor her husband could remember much and her husband really didn't see the point of such a book.
I made it my business to find out all I could about the beautiful young lady now in the twilight years of her life. What I found out filled the booklet and some. I went to talk to her sister, her son, her husband and her friends. I asked them about her life and little anecdotes which I could retell in the booklet.
They all painted a picture about how my charge was a stunningly beautiful young lady who had many potential suitors chasing her, one in particular was a handsome young soldier. My lady was dainty - a talented dancer with the smallest size 2 feet. She could rock and roll with the best of them, jive and twist. She could also glide around a ballroom and was gifted with being able to dance the perfect quick-step and other ballroom dances.
In her younger days she used to cycle with her best friend and her sister from the village in which she lived just outside of her local market town to all the surrounding villages attending the local village dances. During the war years if planes were flying over they all had to switch off their bike lights and cycle in the still darkness of the night time in order to not alert enemy planes to their position.
A young soldier noticed her in a ballroom at a dance and made a beeline for her. He was stricken by her beauty and elegance. She danced with him and then, realising he had "two left feet" and couldn't dance discreetly excused herself. He couldn't keep his eyes off her and used to ask her to dance whenever they met. She wasn't so keen. She used to say to her sister and her friend "If that soldier is coming for me keep him away because he can't dance!" He persisted and now 56 years later they are still happily married and hold hands when they sit next to each other on an evening and during the day.
They told me about her first job and how she used to cycle to work. If she hadn't had a bike it would have been a 3 mile walk! They shared about her wedding day and who was there. I learnt all about the day her son was born and how her husband had registered his name incorrectly in his excitement omitting to give him his own Christian name as a middle name and how annoyed she was that he had forgotten to do this.
I wrote about the day she went with her sister and mother to the fun fair which came to the local town market place every year and how her mother had been spun off one of the bobbing horses on the carousel. I heard about the day her son had fallen off a wall whilst on holiday and dislocated his arm and about the many holidays they took I wrote it all down and between us we documented what we could of her life story. I learnt about how she hated school but loved swimming and would go to school in order to go to the swimming lessons. I heard about how she loved military whist drives and domino drives and what a good player she was. We wrote about the cabaret shows she used to love to go and see and taking her family to the pantomime.
She was a very clever lady who ran a tight ship of a home and controlled all the family budget and managed the house - which ran like clockwork.
It was a very humbling experience, one which made me think about my own life and what, if anything, someone would write if documenting my life story. I'm not at all sure that it would make such good reading as her does! That made me feel a little sad but the thought that no-one would bother to do it for me made me even sadder!
Today was the final piece of the picture I had built about her. Today was the day that we went through her family photos together and chose pictures to match her story and then I read it to her.
It was then that she cried. She called for her husband to come and hear it. Her face lit up with excitement and she kept saying "that's all true, I remember that's what happened. How did you know all this? I can't believe it but i can remember that." over and over again. It was then that I realised that today, at least, I had done a really good job.
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