Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Beatrice, Nebraska
Posts: 18875

SPew
My own personal Schiavo.

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Registered: Feb 2004
Location: in colorado somewhere!
Posts: 26669

Wow,SP.
Why dosent the FUCKING FAMILY take care of him?
This reminds me of fucked up shit too.
The people you work with become more than just residents.
Some people just don't get it.
That RN needs to get her high all mighty head out of her ass.
Thanks for sharing. You didn't give full names here so I think you're OK with HIPPA.
[p's]

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: Behind this monitor.
Posts: 6470

Job or not, clearly you care for him. I personally think it's wrong they even ask you to be part of it, and they ask by putting him back there. You'd be right to help him, even against the law me thinks, as a moral conviction. That is what friends are for.

Not to be morbid, but have you had a chance to ask him? 1=yes, 2=no if he understands what is going on.

If he don't and may not possibly wish to carry on in the life he is with now, could you do what they ask then? Help him along? Even as a friend? *Just thoughts I had while reading your post.

Good luck and strength to you, either way.

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Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Oceanside, CA
Posts: 5181

Wow, man. What a spot to be in, both for you and your friend.
I agree with T that it'd be nice to see what his preferences are. If he's still that conscious, is there some way to discuss it with him?
I'm surprised hospice let him go--my family has had some experience with them, and found the ones we've worked with to be full of empathetic, caring folks (at least in my perception). In this case, he was let go for financial reasons?

If you can talk to him about it, you can ask yourself what you would want him to do if your positions were reversed.

Good luck.

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: USA
Posts: 25409

Tragedy is a creature of proximity. Best of luck to you, SP.

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Registered: Feb 2004
Location: in colorado somewhere!
Posts: 26669

It's all about money these specialty places. The shit I go thru is nothing compared to what SP is going thru but people don't really care it seems.
We've had people needing psychiatric help then when they do get it,their just basically locked up,drugged and observed. Then they get discharged early cause they take so much funding money from them,they wouldn't be able to afford to come back to class for the rest of the year.
What's nice about my agency though is we take our people anyway even when their money runs out. Some of them get free care from us for as long as 6 months out of the year.
That's rare unfortunately,then other agencies cash in on our generosity.
It sucks,man.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Beatrice, Nebraska
Posts: 18875

Money isn't exactly an issue for us because we're a government run agency, with most of our money coming from Federal sources. We just have to deal with stupid audits and asinine regulations coming down from people that don't understand how their regulations impact the facilities.

It's impossible to ask Jon if he understands the situation because he isn't legally in a position to say so. He is diagnosed as being profoundly mentally retarded and that means he isn't capable of making any major decisions. He doesn't have the cognitive skills to grasp the situation. Maybe 20 years ago I would have felt he was capable of making such a decision, but he has deteriorated so far that I really don't feel that he is capable of understanding his situation. Perhaps somewhere in there he actually does, but even if he indicated he wanted to live we would be hard pressed to prove that he actually understood the situation.

To put things into perspective: there was recently a survey performed internally to gauge the opinion of residents on their satisfaction with the place, their day-to-day life, and their knowledge of their rights. Out of the 300 (I'm guessing because I don't know the actual number of residents) people served only something like 70 were deemed capable of even understanding the concepts put forth. Even then the satisfaction scale had to be on a scale of 0 to 2 (0 being negative, 1 being neutral, 2 being positive) because the 0 to 10 scale of satisfaction is too abstract for them to understand. The wording of the questions had to be scrutinized with a microscope to be sure that there was no way the wording could influence the participant's opinion. We even had to find people they weren't familiar with to ask the questions because familiar staff have an unbelievable impact on the responses of the person's served (chiefly that they want to make us happy, so they say what they think we want to hear).

As far as hospice letting him go, it is a matter of money. They would only be paid by the government for five days of hospice service. So when the fifth day was drawing near we were informed he would be evaluated to see how stable he was, and that if he was stable enough to transport we were to come pick him up from St. Elizabeth hospital because he was our problem after that.

I am quite certain that if our positions were reversed Jon would want to see us die rather than continue to suffer, but I also believe that he wouldn't want to take any part in the actual process. There is a very different dynamic involved in this case when compared to the Schiavo case. I doubt any of the nurses in the hospital Mrs. Schiavo had been in would have taken care of her more than a month at most. Hospital nurses rotate fairly frequently and generally just go where they are needed. We have been with him, day after day, for 20 years in some cases. No matter how much they preach to us that we shouldn't get attached, it is literally impossible to perform our job without doing so. I have yet to meet a single person that could maintain such a detached and dispassionate attitude. They say it's a matter of being a professional to not get attached. They say that we can't call them our friends, or to say we are theirs, because we are paid to be there. It is true that we are paid to be there, but what we are paid to do is to keep them safe, clean, and to provide habilitative training. I've always felt that providing friendship and comfort is something we shouldn't be paid for, and we shouldn't be punished for doing so. If I lost my job tomorrow I would visit my old living unit as often as I could. That's how much I love the people I've had the pleasure of taking care of for two years now. If it were possible I would volunteer my time off another job. If I were in a financial position to do so I would build a massive mansion complex to house them all in a better environment than our cold medical one. I would pay for all their medication and food and let them live as free as I could.

I just couldn't believe that they actually asked us if we would take him back on our unit, and then ask us to help end his life. I'm going to talk with some people high up on the food chain to see if we can get a policy in place that says living units should never have to do that.

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Registered: Feb 2004
Location: in colorado somewhere!
Posts: 26669

I hope you get someone to listen,SS. Yea. We gotta keep professional. I always thought that was bullshit. Some of these guys see us more than anyone and to care for them but not care about them?
That's just fucked up.

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Registered: Oct 2000
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Not enough class points.

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Registered: Dec 2002
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SP, I know it had been eating at you, etc, and thank you for sharing, but for your own safety, I highly suggest you change the name of the patient (unless you already have) and at the VERY LEAST, remove the name of the RN.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Beatrice, Nebraska
Posts: 18875

I can use first names, or I can use last names. Perfectly HIPAA safe.

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Registered: Jan 2005
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Truly sorry for your friend/patient and you for the pain and for the position you both find yourselves... most concerned at the moment for your friend's soul and where he will spend eternity...

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Beatrice, Nebraska
Posts: 18875

quote:

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Originally posted by ponymom
Truly sorry for your friend/patient and you for the pain and for the position you both find yourselves... most concerned at the moment for your friend's soul and where he will spend eternity...

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Denver
Posts: 19753

Hahahahahaha.

-m

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