~ Rave sent by Anna ~
I’ve been a caregiver for 15 years… I’ve always been a caregiver, I helped my grandparents, took care of my dad when he had cancer…I’ve always taken care of people, it’s in my nature.
I had the sweetest older client that I just absolutely loved. She was just the sweetest thing. She was starting to get what I think was probably dementia and she remembered me. She always thanked me for helping her get up and get going for the day. It made her feel better that she was able to do that and not have to worry about what she was going to eat or wear and that she was clean the days that I had come. I was just kinda keeping her life in order and she always thanked me for balancing her checkbook.
I had her as a client for about 4 years, she had passed away at the end. She had gotten COVID and just went downhill from there. We kept her out of the nursing home as long as we could but she needed 24 hour care so she spent a little bit of time in the nursing home.
I remember for a while when the state put a bid out for mental health patients and case management and when they got their case management whoever won the bid, literally all the case managers quit literally right before the time they won the bid and so these mental health clients they didn’t have the services that they had before because they had no case management and then it was a real struggle to prove that they needed help.
One of the instances, the gentleman, he said that he could do all the shopping himself and I explained to my supervisor that “yeah he can do the shopping but he’s not going to leave the house unless I go with him”. And I had been working on building confidence for him to be able to make a list and go find those things in the grocery store.
I worked with him to be able to be fairly independent and have a positive outcome.
So we made a case that yes he does need help doing these kinds of things even though he had improved in his ability to go and do things, there were still times that he wouldn’t leave the house.
–Anna, Caregiver for 15 years