Suckered!

There is a hard and fast rule where non-weight-bearing clients are concerned. We do not transfer them unless a sling is in place. There is another rule about people who go dead-weight during a transfer. You guide them slowly down. I know these things. Really!

Today my lovely client decided she would get up out of the bed she has taken to more and more. This time around it has been 8 days in bed. She is extremely weak. She is also anorexic and phobic about injury. She cannot abide the touch of anyone for assistance in transfers. Should you decide to do it another way than the one she has laid out, she will feign deafness and do it her way anyway. I was in a lean-over position, back straight. The transfer SHOULD take about 4 seconds maximum. She decided she was too weak and let herself fall --forwards-- whilst screaming: "Dont let go of me! Don't let go of me!"

I could have guided her down but her wheelchair was in the way, and the table. She would surely crack her pelvis at the very least. I just could not do it. I held onto her. She took her sweet bloody time getting herself sorted out all the while I am holding onto her pajama bottoms by the waistband.

You know what? I am very sore. I should have declined the transfer.
Drat.

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Client 2 battled in the past with a very serious depression. She is a very nice woman who is suffering with back problems. The pain she is experiencing is stopping her from continuing her life in a normal manner. She is now taking very strong pain killers.

As with all people taking such medicines, she now has a new problem: constipation.
She is more proactive than most drinking cranberry juice, eating figs, taking stool softeners and lots of water. Still, today was day 6 of nothing in the bowel department.

Yesterday, she was telling me she felt like crying. Today she really was crying. There is nothing I can do without a Doctors' order. This being a holiday weekend the best I could do was to suggest she call an ambulance _or_ tough it out until the next person arrives and then call. Or wait til morning and call the Doctor. All solutions that really are not.

Thankfully, clients after that were all feeling well, and behaving themselves.
All in all, a typical mundane day in the care lane.

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The mundane man resembles a great ship made for the mighty ocean but trying to navigate in a millpond. He has no far port to reach, no lifting horizon, no precious cargo to carry. His hours are absorbed in routine and petty tyrannies. Small wonder if he gets dissatisfied, quarrelsome, and fed up.One of life’s greatest tragedies is a person with a 10-by-12 capacity and a two-by-four soul. [Dr. Kenneth Hildebrand]