I am free at last to talk about the dear, sweet client who’s side I was by as she lay dying Thursday evening.
It’s a rough ride in the vocation of care giving when patient confidentiality forbids one to share their patient’s condition with even their spouse. It is doubly difficult when your patient and you share so many mutual friends and all you want to do is scream, “She’s dying, Goddammit! Go VISIT HER. I don’t give a FUCK that you’ll feel bad seeing her so ill. Wouldn’t you want someone to do the same FOR YOU?!???”
If one is not mature going into this business, assuming they stick to it (and to their morals), they grow up REAL FUCKING FAST.
I’ve seen a parade of incompetent idiots who claimed to be caregivers, attend to her. One stole from her and her husband (we believe), but I think it was a tie for the LOWEST OF THE LOW between one who stole from the very drugs designed to ease her suffering and the one who walked out of the room and was not there for her when she fell off the commode in the bathroom and broke her hip. If you take away ANYTHING from this post, let it be that, please, dear God in Heaven, NEVER HIRE SOMEONE CLAIMING THEY CAN DO THIS JOB WHO DOES NOT DO IT FOR A LIVING AND HAS GOOD, GLOWING REFERENCES!!!