So why am I writing about my mother's predicament now?
Because after over a year of fighting against institutional arrogance, professional indifference, and bureaucratic inertia, I am now at my wit's end and I have no idea how to move forward when the Powers that Be can break all the rules that are out there (even the ones they wrote to govern themselves) and there is literally no court of appeal.
How does one act as the voice for someone who is 'voiceless' when one is silenced constantly by those who refuse to hear?!
Moving beyond philosophical angst and unanswerable questions, I shall try to provide the cogent summary of how my mother came to be in her present situation.
Last year, that is, in early June, 2014, my father was still trying to provide care for my mother in their home, that is their apartment, in West Kildonan. My mother was having increasingly more health problems, getting up at nights to go to the washroom and falling, requiring my father to try to lift her or to call for the emergency service that the Winnipeg Fire Department offers to assist seniors. Fairly often, as Dad confessed, he would not wake up when Mom had fallen and he would not hear whatever cries or calls she might make: he would simply find her on the floor (apparently, frequently, the cold bathroom tile), either prostate or if she had the strength, sitting up.
At the same time, she was suffering from increased stress from the changes to the homecare staff to whom she had become so attached that were forced upon everyone by the delightful bureaucrats 'managing' the homecare service for Manitoba Health.
Digression: Although Mom thought of the ladies who aided her daily, and especially the wonderful lady who was providing 'respite' for Dad, as friends, she was still receiving help from competent aides who could understand her situation and needs and with whom she could try to communicate. Like many homecare clients, we have heard (and substantiated) the stories of monoglot Anglophone staff being assigned to take care of little old ladies in the North End who only spoke and speak Polish or Ukrainian (one such lady went to great efforts to find the number of her former homecare aide to call the aide to ask if she had done something to offend her and if she apologised, if the aide would come back).
Also at the same time as the falls and the depression over the loss of her familiar, friendly "Team Ollie" faces, Mom was experiencing increased problems with incontinence. I suspected some kind of bladder infection. At the very least, I told father, it needed to be ruled out. I told mother that it was possible to treat very easily with medication once any infection was ruled out or cured. I could not get my father to do anything.
Homecare, as I was told later, was doing a wonderful job of documenting my father's increasing difficulties or -- as I was told verbatim by one Homecare manager -- "his failures to provide adequate care" for my mother for 6 months prior to the night, when just after 10 p.m., Mom had another fall and Dad decided that that was it. No discussion. No call to his son in Winnipeg to come help. Just a call to have her taken by ambulance to the closest medical centre, Seven Oaks General Hospital.
... to be continued
No comments:
Post a Comment