Delilah

I received some sad news today. A lady I had been caring for passed away yesterday morning.

When you work with older people you become accustomed to the subject of death being raised and quite often it becomes an accepted part of living. Sometimes clients tell you that every night they go to bed praying to their God to take them home. Others can be fearful of what their future may bring to them. I personally have developed my own way of coping with this kind of conversation. I call it crossing Rainbow Bridge. It’s just a way of me helping someone else to cope, when the end of their life is surely coming. It helps me deal with my own emotions, of which there are truly no room in my role.

This particular lady has left me with some beautiful memories of my early time caring in the community. She lived alone, was bed bound due to crippling arthritis, with sight loss and some hearing loss. She didn’t always remember recent things clearly but had some great stories to tell. Her favourite tale involved her meeting the Duke of Edinburgh and always ended with her saying ‘He went right up, in my estimation!’

This lady had no family of her own. She had not married and had had no children of her own. I recall a niece, who had taken care of food deliveries, who had arranged everything that it was possible to arrange and who phoned regularly to chat.  But there was no-one regularly visiting there on a day to day, face-to-face basis. There was no-one to get the little special things, like nice lotions and potions.  No-one to hold her hand.  She would be alone  from 20.30 until the morning carers arrived around 6.45.

But of course, there was ’us’. Not many people notice ‘us’. We tend to lurk in petrol stations at 6am, filling up with petrol, or can be found in late night shops looking for chocolate. We can often be found, if you look hard enough, chewing our steering wheels out of frustration and, quite possibly, even in tears. Oh yes, It happens.

We called four times a day on this particular client, without fail. Due to the vulnerability of this lady we kind of fell in to a routine – if we were early we didn’t wait – we went in.  We talked. We took her treats. We listened. We ‘donated’ our time.  It often seemed as if the fairies had called. Special drinking cups appeared. Wet-wipes popped up in the toiletries basket. Soft centred chocolate quite often materialised on the bedside table.  If I had found the culprits I would, of course, have needed to firmly  remind them of their need to always keep a professional distance. Oddly, I never found out who it was.

Then it was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Through the twilight shift that evening ‘us carers’ managed to see snippets of the jubilee concert. All our clients loved it and it became very contagious. I arrived at my lady suitably early. The other carer was already there. The telly was on. We had a cup of tea each and we toasted the Queen. We listened to how the Duke of Edinburgh had gone up in her estimation, that special day. As we began the nuts and bolts of the call, getting the lady into her nightie, we began a running commentary. So and so is wearing a beautiful blue ball gown. This person is doing this and that. It was lovely.

Then Tom Jones came on. OK, you should know we are Welsh. Tom Jones can do no wrong. Our lady loved him. We described how he looked in his lovely smart suit, all bronzed and sexy. We giggled a lot and I am not ashamed to say we all made various comments about this gentleman which could, in some circles, be described as flattering, perhaps not so in others.

And then he sang Delilah. We put the sound up really high on the telly and we all sang along.  Loudly!  I think you could safely say we gave it ‘some welly’.  The perfect song, as all of us knew all the words and EVERYONE knows the chorus!

Once we had completed all we needed to do we had to move on. The lady was happy, comfortable and secure. OK, next client!

The next morning I received a telephone call from my co-ordinator. She needed my opinion on the condition of the lady at my 20.30 call the previous evening. There was concern from the morning carers as she had described to them that she had been at a party last night. They wanted to know how she had seemed when I had called to get her ready for bed. Did she appear well, was there any confusion?

The penny dropped and I explained…..

To my 20.30 call – I really, really wish you a very safe journey over Rainbow Bridge. It was time.

 

 

 

 

If you just press that….

As a carer there are some things we are not allowed to do. After all we aren’t social workers, or nurses. We have professional boundaries. This is right and proper. But there are other things we must remember. Climbing up, for example to change a light bulb is a real no-no. This is actually, in all fairness, not health and safety gone mad but an acknowledgement of the fact that if a carer was to fall the client may not be able to assist them in any way. Can you imagine the potential embarrassment for a carer if a client has had to press their emergency call button to ensure a safe recovery from the floor or worse, a trip to A & E, for the one person they are supposed to rely on? Not only would it not look good on a CV but you would never be allowed to live it down by your mates!

But sometimes you have to rely on your common sense. I called at one house at a very late bedtime call. This client would far rather go to bed at 1am but appreciates that even carers have a home to go to. Even me. However, there is always this certain reluctance to move from the chair and begin the trip up to bed. Often this is just because she has decided that she would much rather just sit and natter. Well, nattering is something I tend to excel at, I confess, so this can actually make the call run well over. However as it is clearly recorded in the care plan as a ‘bed call’ then carers must ensure that clients are actually safely IN bed before they leave.

This one particular evening, after great persuasion I eventually managed to assist the client into the stair-lift. Nearly all of these stair lifts are different. Some are so old they take forever to get moving. Others are so new and complicated they scare the living daylights out of you. Same with washing machines, ovens and microwaves – some of these are so tricky that you end up puzzling away for half an hour then hitting a button by accident which makes it all work as if by magic. Regrettably our training does not cover mechanical or electrical engineering, which sometimes could actually be useful.

Anyway, the client is now safely in the stair-lift. I run through to pop the kettle on whilst the stair-lift begins its very slow, painful journey up the stairs. The kettle goes on and the electric and all the lights go off. The whole place was plunged into total darkness and of course the stair-lift had stopped.

The client is now trying to get out of the chair whilst I am desperately waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. This is not my house so I don’t have that instinctive mental map of what is where. I actually hate being in the dark. Of course, from a good old health and safety point of view I don’t actually know what this client may have moved or whether her Zimmer frame is lying in wait to ‘get me’ at the first innocent move of my feet. Walking sticks can also be buggers for silently sliding to the floor to present the unwitting and innocent walker with a challenge akin to those hurdles we had to jump over in school athletics classes.

Luckily this house had a torch and, this bit is so important, my lady accurately recalls where it is. This in itself was not much short of a miracle. But, to my dismay this torch light simply allows the client to open the electric cupboard and start fiddling about with the various switches. You may have heard of the text phrase OMG!   Well, that is kind of what I was thinking. Person centred care means allowing a client to take risks. Choices must be theirs to make. I reasoned that this doesn’t actually mean allowing a client to blow themselves (and you) up.   It did take a little bit of really calm negotiation and persuasion but eventually my client was returned safely to her chair in the living room.

So, what is a carer to do? These electrics looked a bit antiquated to me. I have absolutely no wish to press any button at all. I am no good to this client if reduced to a very small pile of dust on the carpet. Please bear in mind it is now way past 23:00. No, the client does not have an electrician to call. Her nearest family member is approximately 80 miles away. ‘Policy’ says I should make her comfortable on the sofa, ensuring she is warm and comfortable and wait until the morning for professional electricians to arrive. Right, well yes of course, like that was going to happen. The minute I left she would have had her head in the cupboard, probably lit by a candle, flicking switches until the National Grid itself fused. I then decided that what we needed was a bloke. They like electrics and fiddling about, I’m sure. I do already know that quite tall blokes are really good at changing light bulbs.

I eventually find out from my client that there was just what we needed – a bloke – living next door. So off I go. I knocked the door with my best official knock and when it was answered I boldly introduced myself, I explained the electric has gone off and asked this poor bloke to please come in to assist. And bless his heart, he did. Luckily his own electrics were equally ancient so he knew precisely which switch to turn on. It worked. No-one died and my CV is still looking reasonably good. He also took it upon himself to remove the offending kettle that had caused this whole pantomime in the first place. In the words of my lady ‘I always said he was a good boy.’

I was just so grateful that the electric had failed before the antiquated stair lift had moved off, with my lady being stranded half way up (or down) the stairs. Dialling 999 for the fire brigade really would not have impressed the person on-call at that time of night. Probably would also have given us something else to natter about!