CONTENT WARNING: Injury detail.

I work as a cook at an assisted living facility. One day, I’m the morning cook, having been there since 5:30 AM. It’s after lunch, and I’m cleaning up, getting ready to go home, when the evening cook, who is known to be accident-prone, comes up to me.

Evening Cook: “Hey, [My Name].”

I look down, and he has a paring knife sticking out of his arm.

Evening Cook: “I tripped. Could you please go get one of them?”

“One of them” referring to the nursing staff. I go and get the nurse. She doesn’t want to risk pulling it out in case it hit a vein. The angle of the knife is fairly shallow, so she wraps the whole thing in gauze and has me drive him to the emergency room. My other coworker was on vacation, and my boss wasn’t able to come in, so I had to stay for the whole day, until about 7 PM.

This took place in the late 1990’s. I worked for a company that supplied domiciliary services for elderly people.

The first problem was my rota. My first call was at 9 AM. I had a one-hour visit. This included such things as checking that the client had their medications and their home was clean and tidy.

Then comes the first problem. I had to be there until 10 AM. 

My next client was at the other side of town, normally a ten-to-fifteen-minute drive. I was expected to be there at, you’ve guessed it, at 10 AM. This happened every day. But that’s not the worst thing to happen.

I’ve just come back from a week off. At 9 AM, I was visiting my first client of the day, whom I’ll call Client Bill. 

Bill was hard of hearing, so on entering his house, he liked me to shout:

Me: “Hi Bill!”

To let him know I was there. One day, as usual, it was:

Me: “Hi Bill!”

And I walked into his living room, only to see his family sitting around a coffin.

He had passed away whilst I was off, but no one at the office bothered to let me know. Thankfully, the family, most of whom knew me, were understanding. 

My next call was a gentleman I’ll call Bob. This is another client who preferred that I call out upon entering his home, though he would often have to unlock his front door.

I spent ten minutes knocking on the door, then his neighbour came out, and you’ve guessed it, he, too, had passed away during my time off.

Luckily, no one was in the house this time. 

That afternoon, I went to the office and gave my notice. The above were just two of the reasons I left, but they were the final straw.

I got a job at an assisted living facility as a cook. Employees who haven’t had their flu shot are required to wear a mask during “flu season,” defined by specific dates which I don’t remember off the top of my head.

There is a teenager who comes in to help on weekends, and I notice that he is wearing a mask. I’m surprised his nurse mother didn’t make him get a flu shot, and I’m kinda judging him a little bit.

The next day, my boss is asking about allergies.

Boss: “So [Other Cook] is allergic to coconuts, and he had a reaction the last time she made something with coconuts in it, and [Teenager] is allergic to raw eggs. He can eat cooked eggs, though.”

Two days later, I’m serving breakfast when it hits me.

Me: “Oooh!”

Coworker: “What?”

Me: “[Teenager] has to wear a mask because he can’t get the flu shot because he’s allergic to eggs!”

I work in the office of a company that staffs home health aides (HHAs assist with non-medical care, assist with daily living tasks, etc.). I get a call from one of our clients.

Client: “I am furious! No! Worse! I am livid!”

I gloss over the immediate need to create a list of synonyms for anger based on intensity (ADHD brain!) and ask the client:

Me: “Can you please let me know the issue that’s causing you distress, ma’am?”

Client: “That new woman you sent over! She’s a busybody! She’s getting too much into my business!”

Me: “The home health aide, [Name], who was assigned last week?”

Client: “Yes! Her! She got into my fridge and threw away all my jams!”

Me: “Did she say why?”

Client: “Yeah, but it was only a little bit of mold! I usually just scrape around those bits, and it still tastes fine on toast!”

Me: “Ma’am, it sounds like she was doing her job and assisting you in removing potentially hazardous food from your home.”

Client: “But I didn’t ask her to!”

Me: “Actually, you did, when you signed the contract to allow our HHAs into your home to assist your day-to-day living. The contract also involved monitoring your health, including any potential impediments to your health.”

Client: “Well… she had better replace all my jams! I had them organized just how I liked them!” *Click.*

When I mentioned the call to the HHA in the office, she just rolled her eyes.

HHA: “Yeah, technically she had them organized… from least to most moldy!”

This will be the final entry of the saga of the crazy grandmother from the Stab Caesar series. This is because my parents finally got her on Medicaid, and she is now in a home full-time. But it was not without drama.

In October, her doctors approved her for a pacemaker set to be put in at the end of December. However, in early November, she came downstairs one Thursday, claiming she didn’t have a pulse. My dad barely managed to find it, and the decision was made to take her to the ER. The doctors at our local hospital determined her pacemaker surgery had to be moved up. This meant they needed to transfer her to a different (and much better) hospital in the next county.

Now, non-emergency transport is, in a word, slow. They took so long to get to her that my dad ended up leaving before the ambulance arrived. The slow service was completely unacceptable to her, and no one could give her an exact time of when her transport would arrive. It was nine or ten o’clock at night when it finally arrived, based on when she stopped calling the house to complain about the wait, the nurses, and whatever else she fancied.

Friday, the next day, she had the surgery. My dad, uncle, and cousin went to visit her around lunchtime. She was not happy. “The doctors are horrible! The nurses are horrible! I’ve never been treated so horribly in my life!” This is arguably the best hospital in the entire state, and you don’t hear many stories about patient neglect here, so my uncle did some digging.

The problem: the doctors and nurses insisted on doing their jobs, which involved seeing their other patients. My grandmother seriously expected them to wait around on her hand and foot like they were servants. My uncle went to the nurses’ station to warn them that she was in a mood, but she had already been labeled as “difficult” in their system. She had been in this hospital for a little over twelve hours at this point.

The next day, my dad went to get her, since we had been told since October that the pacemaker surgery was supposed to be an outpatient procedure. But two different doctors agreed that since she is ninety-five, she needed to go straight to a rehab place for a few days so she can be under observation and someone can answer any questions she has about the pacemaker. She was pissed when she found out she wasn’t going home, but the staff eventually convinced her that this was for the best.

The staff at the hospital told my dad they would arrange the transportation, but since it was a weekend, she may not get transferred that day. Dad stayed with her most of the day, but he did eventually have to leave since Mom didn’t want him driving an hour and a half in the dark. (He had a mini-stroke last summer, and he’s mostly fine, but every once in a while, he does something weird, like taking three lefts to turn right.) Crazy called the house several times to complain about the lack of transportation. My dad tried to reason with her. “It’s Saturday night, they’re probably busy and have minimal staff.” This wasn’t good enough.

Sometime on Sunday, she was transferred to the rehab/nursing home. My dad visited her on Monday. She was not happy. After a few days, some of the staff talked to my parents about getting her homed there permanently. Now, my parents had tried to get her on Medicaid a few times before, but she was always denied since she made too much money from Social Security. She drew off my grandfather’s Social Security, even though 1) they divorced when Dad was in high school, 2) he’s been dead for almost twenty-six years now, and 3) she’s been married and divorced a couple of times since she divorced my grandfather.

We can’t figure out how she was allowed to do this.) The staff at the rehab were great and helped walk my parents through the process in a way that would significantly raise her chances of getting accepted, and in the meantime, Medicare would pay for, I think, a hundred days of care for her.

Grandma went back and forth on her view of the place during this hundred-day trial period. She liked the social aspect of it and often played bingo with the other residents. (We had tried to sign her up for elderly social things before and rejected it.) But, she wasn’t allowed to have any outside medicine, and the staff still weren’t treating her like the queen she thinks she is.

We did try to clean her room while she was gone since it was a complete disaster area. The amount of medicine we found in her room was astonishing. Twenty bottles of unopened OmegaXL. Twelve unopened bottles and three opened bottles of Balance of Nature vitamins. Two opened things of Colace. One unopened bottle of calcium chews. Four bottles of Shaklee vitamins. And a whole medium-sized box full of various prescription medications. Some of the medicines and supplements my parents bought for her with her money, but the rest she conned my cousin into getting for her.

Then there was the food.

There was a peanut butter jar that wasn’t closed, three big cans of coffee, too many protein shakes to count, a moldy orange juice bottle, a large jug of powdered Balance of Nature, three boxes of her special tea bags (she refused to drink tea that wasn’t a certain brand), and two cans of long-expired chicken were in her closet. There were also countless pills scattered on her floor, and we are lucky the cats never tried to eat them. The power strip had stains from where she spilled coffee, juice, and who knows what else on it over the years. We’re lucky she didn’t burn our house down. And the smell of urine, baby powder, and Chanel No. 5 was baked into that room. Leaving the window open for a full day did nothing to get rid of that smell. Our best guess is that she lost her sense of smell long before she moved in with us.

We greatly enjoyed our holidays without her. The stress levels in the house plummeted. My parents started to fantasize about going away for long weekends without having to arrange care for her. Finally, at the end of January, we got the acceptance letter in the mail! She is approved and will now stay in the home!

Related:
We Should Totally Just Stab Caesar! (Salad), Part 2
We Should Totally Just Stab Caesar! (Salad)