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Jun. 17th, 2014
My Mother's Care
Jun. 17th, 2014 11:59 amMy mother was having trouble with her hearing aids so we called in the expert and he said the reason they were whistling was because the signal was bouncing off impacted ear-wax.
So we took her to the doctor and now she's on a regimen of olive oil drops administered twice daily to be followed- on Friday- by a good syringing. When she has the drops in she can't hear a thing. She was lying on the bed this morning with the radio a couple of feet away- blasting away so loud it was vibrating- and she asked me if it was still on.
And now for something completely different* I took a call this morning from my mother's chief care provider. "Sorry," said the office bod cheerily. (I'm paraphrasing) "But we've got staff off sick so would you mind awfully if we cancelled your live-in carer for next week". I played a very straight bat. In fact I got coldly angry. And by the end of the call she was saying, "Let's forget I ever said any of this." I'm calming down now but, really, two things. (1) A reputation for trustworthiness is your chief asset, don't squander it. (2) Which is the same point phrased differently: don't share your management problems with the client or they'll think you're a right bunch of amateurs.
In case that sounded totally disgruntled I want to add that the carers this company sends are brilliant. That's why we don't want to sack them and go to another agency. I said as much to the office bod, so leavening the cold anger with genuine appreciation.
*Damn you, Monty Python, for turning a very useful form of words for connecting one paragraph to the next into a comic catchphrase. You thought you were being clever, didn't you? Well you weren't.
So we took her to the doctor and now she's on a regimen of olive oil drops administered twice daily to be followed- on Friday- by a good syringing. When she has the drops in she can't hear a thing. She was lying on the bed this morning with the radio a couple of feet away- blasting away so loud it was vibrating- and she asked me if it was still on.
And now for something completely different* I took a call this morning from my mother's chief care provider. "Sorry," said the office bod cheerily. (I'm paraphrasing) "But we've got staff off sick so would you mind awfully if we cancelled your live-in carer for next week". I played a very straight bat. In fact I got coldly angry. And by the end of the call she was saying, "Let's forget I ever said any of this." I'm calming down now but, really, two things. (1) A reputation for trustworthiness is your chief asset, don't squander it. (2) Which is the same point phrased differently: don't share your management problems with the client or they'll think you're a right bunch of amateurs.
In case that sounded totally disgruntled I want to add that the carers this company sends are brilliant. That's why we don't want to sack them and go to another agency. I said as much to the office bod, so leavening the cold anger with genuine appreciation.
*Damn you, Monty Python, for turning a very useful form of words for connecting one paragraph to the next into a comic catchphrase. You thought you were being clever, didn't you? Well you weren't.