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2:20 p.m. | Thursday, Jul. 11, 2002
So, how was your day? I haven't even been up over an hour and already today is a total fuck up. For those of you who have been reading for awhile you know about this lift I was so excited about getting and we were worried that we wouldn't get funding and all that. If you haven't been reading I suppose you could check last month or the month before, I don't remember where it started. In any case, when we finally got it and started wanting to train home health aids to use it, so the home health aid supervisor came in with the nurse and occupational therapist to try it. Apparently she hurt her neck on it and wouldn't approve it for home health aids to use. This is bullshit, because you couldn't hurt your neck on this if you tried. We called the manufacturer of the lift (called Easy Pivot) and she laughed when we told her. We got a home care safety whatever the hell in here and she never gave a definite answer whether or not she would approve it. So, that brings us to today. We were trying a new lift called the Quick Step, which would work with the ceiling track lift (which we have had for awhile). We were rather excited about it because the people who gave us funding for the Easy Pivot said that we could just transfer the money to the other lift (Quick Step) because it was the same price pretty much. So we tried that today. It didn't work. I wasn't really surprised at all, but my mom is pretty torn up because her back has started to hurt from lifting me. I�m apparently too short or small to use this Quick Step thing. It�s made in Denmark or something and says that you can use it on 10 year olds. They must have taller ten year olds in Denmark. In any case we are going to try a smaller sling with the Quick Step to see if that helps. My mom was just bawling because she was counting on this so her back isn't permanently fucked up. We are also (we, the occupational therapist mostly) going to look into a different type of sling altogether that might work with my existing ceiling track lift. It�s like nobody has information that is supposed to tell us what to try or what will work. It is hard because everyone is different and every situation is different but nobody even has guidelines. It�s very frustrating. Not to mention that each machine or lift or sling costs a heck of a lot of money. From $250 for a sling to $7000 for a type of lift. Another fucking mess is physio and Sherbrooke. I said in another entry that I�m not sure if I even can do physio at Sherbrooke and not be tired for the rest of the week. The thing is I�d go anyway (even if not doing phsyio) and see if I can find something to do so my mom can have a break. However, they don't feed me there, they don't take me to the bathroom and these would be the things that would give my mom a break. This isn't the biggest problem; the biggest problem is that community physio ends at the end of this month. So we'd have to find volunteers that would come in 2-3 times a week and do my exercises with me. There is no way my mom can do them with me; she has enough on her plate already. This idea of leaving everything for the family to do is bullshit. It doesn't work. My mom also doesn't have the time or energy to start putting out ads and flyers to find volunteers and interview them and then train them to do the physio with me. Frankly I�m not that keen on it myself. I can't do all that for her either. So we are a bit stuck. We can't really pay anyone because we don't have money for that and who's going to do it if we don't pay them. Possibly students looking for stuff to put on their resume? How long can we depend on a student though, it would be constant turnover the way I see it. More work, more looking for someone, more training. It�s a never-ending cycle of crap. If you want to hear more good news, my mom is calling all of her side of the family coming to my cousin's wedding. My mom and dad shopped for and found a patio set and everyone agreed to chip in (or we thought they did) for this wedding gift. My mom calls my aunt... now just a bit of information here, my aunt works at a credit union and her husband is a top mechanic for a luxury type car. They have one son. All the couples are chipping in $50 for this patio set. My aunt says that they can't afford it. What kind of fucking bullshit is this? They can't help buy her nephew a wedding present!! My mom is so mad it's making her ill. I myself who gets $85 for personal expenses a month am putting in $25. Surely a family with two working parents can find $50 somewhere. Especially since other relatives with much less money have no hesitation about putting in the 50 bucks. So it looks like my parents, who put the time and effort into finding the patio set, picked it up so everyone else doesn�t have to put in their time, are also going to have to put in twice the money of everyone else. Not that they mind, but it just seems fucking unfair that they have to do all the work plus put in extra cash. They have a friend that works at Wal-Mart and he said that he couldn't help them out with his 10% discount by buying the patio set himself and being paid back. He might lose his job. What utter crap. Like Wal-Mart is going to investigate that he's bought a gift for a family friend. What do they care, 10% doesn't even cover the cost of fucking tax for fuck's sake. My mom says she is tired of being dumped on, especially by so-called "friends" and "family". It�s really sickening. I�m tired of being shit on myself. By friends, family and the government. It�s all bullshit and it's wrong. Just goddamn well wrong. What happened to compassion and decency?? Why does the government keep cutting funds and programs when they know fucking well that these programs need more money and people not less? They won't put people in nursing homes and they fucking leave people twisting in the wind when they stay at home. Then they wonder why health care isn't working. Let me tell you I could write a fucking book on why health care isn't damn well working. People (families and health care workers) are unpaid or under-funded, overworked, under-staffed and STRESSED OUT. I'm not even talking about the patients yet that are warehoused and walked on. Trampled by a system that is supposed to be helping them.
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This is my blogchalk:
Canada, Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, , English, , Female, 26-30, Reading.