Death by baby steps part 2

Chapter 3 The Beginning

Once I got into the role I was mostly left to drift I had a list of minimum requirements and the compulsory education that I had to get through but as for support or being shown what I should and shouldn’t do I was left in the lurch. No one had time for me which overall probably worked in my favour, I could get to know the residents at my own speed, or at least until someone spotted me.

My colleague Carmen is a bolshy Northern loudmouth basically kind-hearted woman; who cares too much about her personal life and screwing everything that crosses her sp**ting path on Tinder, Plenty of Fish and any other free dating site she could get her filthy hands on. Of course, I fell in love with her immediately as we were like a hive mind of sorts and always on the same wavelength, it seemed like us against the world; whilst trying to care for these lovely amazing people. For a long time, it was perfect, until she became a brown-nosing management suck up piece of s**t but more about that later. For now, we are two peas of the same pod and I am loving it because between trips to go and fetch equipment and the odd bit of guidance here and there we felt like we were doing an amazing job. In the care industry or certainly Beech Wood House, a good job is never good enough again stuff I’ll go into a bit more later. Carmen was always my talisman, if things were not going well it was easy to confide in her because she was seeing it through the same kaleidoscope of hurdles and problems and people and management..... mostly management. Most of the time Carmen was pretty happy to scream and shout on the activities departments behalf if not my personal behalf - being Northern I suppose this is normal for her. Sometimes I did find her outbursts over the top, unnecessary and embarrassing but the management did and still do tolerate it and never slap her down so it must be fine to go and shout at your line manager regularly... Plus she was so delicate at little pep talks and giving suggestions and we just vibed on so many ideas, she was quick to agree with lots of things I had to say so I knew I wasn’t far off the right path.

When we wanted we could pop out to collect something or go and buy something or just have a break from the home; we would have these long deep chats that just seemed like we were meant to be my friends. Maybe this is all me - as I'm an endless romantic I try to keep that stuff to myself for at least the first couple of weeks because I tend to be a bit full-on otherwise and end up tattooing people’s faces on my arse. There is this age-old adage "don’t s**t where you eat" and this certainly applies here don't reveal your lady crushes too soon. For a while, I kept my cards to my chest, until I could get the measure of her but I was sure she’s a good egg, if people even say that anymore? If a girl tells you she's a squirter and it feels like she's peed the bed when she c*ms, that’s like being blood brothers as far as I'm concerned.

My first few days I spent with my head in the policy books - this is the manual handling safety, guide to fire safety, health and safety, positive behaviour management (A cute way of saying how to avoid getting assaulted; de-escalate or escape from a potential assault. It doesn't even sound like the title right! Violence is not a positive behaviour in any shape or form) and many other types of safety. Oh, and infection control another delightful folder tome to get my head around. I think my memory has mostly blocked out the scars, which are, the infection control manual and open wounds procedures as the thought of puss...... Let’s just say puss is my problem area, every health professional has one. It might be vomit, it might be poo, it might be spit but everyone’s got one and this industry helps you find that thing very quickly. Then all you have to do is learn to breathe through your mouth and try not to TASTE it, while are you wiping madly in the general direction of where it’s coming from. I think that’s why the care industry tend to employ a lot of mothers because they’ve done a lot of bum wiping in their lives already (A thoroughly abused olfactory system should be in the job description) and therefore, are not frightened by a pair of funny looking balls and a vagina that just doesn’t look right because guess what... there’s doesn’t look right anymore either! I think that the care industry does play on the fact that Mum’s often need the job so badly they will put up with pretty much anything but as you can tell; I might be a sceptic by now.

As for training, I was on the bottom of the list not because I hadn’t got the experience or haven’t been there long enough but because I wasn’t a priority it was more important to get the carers up to speed as quickly as possible because they literally cannot employ carers fast enough. There are so many care jobs in the UK, it is a booming business as the population is only getting older, as one of my favourite authors said "I mean, you get the same amount of youth as everyone else, but a great big extra helping of being very old" Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett so again left adrift. Honestly, I didn’t mind, I had so many ideas whirling about in my noggin that I felt alive for the first time in years. I had daydreams of us playing badminton with the old codgers on the lawn and sipping cups of tea and eating extraordinary amounts of cake. At least, some of my daydream did come true actually but not in the way I thought.

My first day consisted of the nurse in charge at the time Joe taking me round to each unit and pointing at these tiny little ladies and telling me which ones were biters, which ones would assault me and which ones would inappropriately touch me. I found this amazing as she was saying this in front of the resident, within hearing distance, surely this kind of talk would just give them ideas.... If this really was their personality or problem whatever you’d like to call it? - I was just worried that they get funny ideas anyway and I would inadvertently get more action than I’d had in months. But I, being very innocent of all this, couldn’t believe that these lovely little quiet (mostly) ladies sitting there in their own seemingly calm worlds could possibly hurt me. Being a reasonably able-bodied person about a third of their age...I found it all a bit hard to take. And so the list went on, thanks, I learned in later weeks that Joe wasn’t actually a negative person overall she was just trying to (I don’t know) throw me in the deep end I guess or scare the shit out of me and see if I'd fly or fight my way out!?! I can’t even tell you now which residents she pointed at because she soon moved on to another unit (new word for ward). The next day I was left at a loose end with my great big tomes to get through. So, I read and I read and I read some more until nothing was going in and I was just a pretty ornament in the reception area looking busy (or not as the case may be). How busy can you look when you’re just reading folders? One of my very first days there I spent finding more out about the residents and was amazed to find a lady of 96 years old call Daisy. I couldn’t believe that this national treasurer of a lady, that she was just being stored away and forgotten about in this out of the way place, on a brand new housing estate. It was amazing how she was still kicking about after 96 years on this planet, I still cannot fathom it. She was made all the more adorable by the fact that almost everything frightened her or worried her. Also, the fact that she appreciated everything you did whether it be to bring her a cup of tea or help to the bathroom; she thought you were an angel and that just made me glow even more because who doesn’t love the reflection of some glory back at them and I felt this is exactly the kind of person I had been sent to help. She sadly passed away yesterday I’ve been blessed to know her for 10 months out of her 96 years. I do feel guilty now for having joked around with her about getting her letter for reaching 100 years from the Queen and that she would be with us forever; I think I might have pushed my hopes upon her in this way. I think I would have gladly taken her own home as my own grandmother if I’d been allowed, sadly she is frightened of car journeys so she wouldn’t have made it there without having several heart attacks. At least, there wasn’t in the elevator to get in the way. I couldn’t see her towards the end, I wanted to but I just couldn’t cope. At some point in this kind of role, you have to start protecting yourself because otherwise, it will get to you. Every death becomes a death in your own family or your own loved one and that’s how burnout happens in the care world. This isn't only because you’ve given all the strength in your body to look after them. Given the number of back problems - I think that the care world would be a lot better off investing in a couple of physios rather than all the days of sickness caused by back problems. Despite all the manual handling training and specialist equipment, you’re still pushing and pulling these people around whether you like it or not. You’re still holding your head up on one side for 20 minutes while someone gives him a clean from the front, from the back and make sure he’s presentable before his day begins. You’re still hoisting Betty’s buttocks out of a faulty chair so that she can get to the bathroom on time and you always do it on the same arm so you never really give yourself a break either.

One of the carers who really does take each one of these long-term residence as a death in her own family is Darcy. Just before Christmas Darcy had threatened to take a job in a dispensary in a pharmacy across town, but after a couple of days thinking about it and trying to sit with the idea in her head, she talked herself out of it and begged for her job back. Management made her sweat for a couple of days but then she was back - honestly, the home couldn’t lose her but again something I’ll get back to you. This was during a time where 7 staff were leaving at once, another topic I will have to get back to.

When I arrived at Beech Wood House in January 2017 the staff mostly consisted of people that have been there since the beginning which was July of the previous year. on the whole they were dedicated, caring, ironically hard working amazing people. People who sweated and slog their guts out for those residents every day and came back the following day for more. Often, these staff would stay late without pay, come in early or buy items out of their own money just because they cared so much. When I met the team one woman scared the s*** out of me and that was Nicky. Nicky seemed like an old veteran of The Old Guard, who didn’t take any s*** and generally got the job done task by task no matter what. I learnt over time that Nicky is actually a lot softer around the edges but it took me a while to really believe it in those first few weeks.

I was so excited, I was working with my best friend, in a job that seemed amazing and every day I came home with new ideas to research in my evenings. An amazing new tale to tell my other half, it seemed like everything was coming together finally and the world was right for me, at last. Every evening I would go about looking at craft websites, Pinterest, YouTube and I would scale the universe and join groups on Facebook just to find the next bit of research about dementia. I still had my dreams of cocktails and badminton on the lawn once I gain some experience I realise that the old people had reservations about my dream. A lot of them (in winter) are too frightened to go outside. All the old people are pretty much convinced that they will fall over and break her hip; as soon as they touch their foot to the hallowed ground of the outdoors. This seems to go on from October through to March April every year, so for 6 months of the year at least most of them are stuck inside. Even if I tried to convince them that I’ll wrap them up like little presents, they still would not budge. As I joined in January, there was no chance in seeing them even look at the lawn for another few months. Still, I had so much I wanted to do.

For example tea dances, I’ll concede half of them don’t/can't get out of their chairs in order to join in a tea dance. I wanted to persevere and include everyone regardless. Maybe we should look at some chair exercises to strengthen those muscles? But we had to go to the Headquarters and speak to the H&S guys there about how I go about this. Plus I would need to get the GPS permission apparently, the GP wouldn’t sign their lives away for a few arm waves and leg stretches. God forbid! So I was stuck, I couldn’t even use the NHS guidance on chair exercises from the government specifically for those stuck in a chair. Hurdles like this were just an everyday issue, I should've really gotten used to them.

Every staff suggestion, every comment from a resident I took to mean an instruction. An instruction as to what I should be doing, what I should be organising; even down to the staff nights out, no one wanted to do it and I didn't want anyone to hate me so I just did it. I would organise and put things together, Facebook everyone and add them so I can make sure that everyone got invited etc etc. Then like baby Bambi taking his first steps I really just didn’t want to get shot like my mother.

During the interview, I was told that in order to get some care experience of I was sadly lacking I would need to do some care shifts as well as my activity shifts. Of course, being the good lap dog I did as I was told meaning I worked non-stop except 2 weekends off a month.

What Beech Wood House don’t realise or, specifically their management, is that the staff could literally walk out any time and earn more money per hour pretty much anywhere else.

As standard throughout the industry, other care homes pay extra for doing extra hours, working at night, working anti-social hours, hitting attendance bonuses and so on and so on. But, Beech Wood House don’t do any of this, that’s why they can’t keep a decent nurse and have to have agency staff all the time. This is partly why 7 staff were leaving before that Christmas. The soul-crushing micromanagement dictatorship style that’s going down there didn't help. This was down to an ex-medic and ex-Ministry of Defence nurse called May all backed up by a very belligerent disheartened Lily who was a bit of a battle axe to begin with. They took over from Sienna the kind-hearted and softly-spoken, more flexible manager of the home that everyone adored and would do anything for. Sienna was taken out of the picture, a year later Sienna was demoted due to a bad OFSTED report. Sienna had to go back to being a carer, after a mental breakdown she tried to slit her wrists in front of the HQ offices. Nice one "team". At the time I thought "I'm not surprised this is stressing Sienna out". I, a lowly activities assistant, had just been signed off with anxiety issues so god only knows what Sienna was dealing with to lead her to try and taken own life.

I guess once you’ve been electrocuted at work, no one bothers to ask you how you are. You get a little bit jaded or bitter about the place. I couldn’t believe it really. I rolled down the blinds because the sun was getting a bit low and getting in Marg’s eyes. I accidentally bump into and knock over a lamp. As I went to put the lampshade back onto the floor lamp I get a jolt that makes a scream like a little girl and knocks out all the electrics on that floor. My colleagues were hardly concerned at this point, the atmosphere at work seemed to be: cover your own a*se because no one else will. They were more concerned about the residents doing the same thing, rather than checking I was OK. Weird, considering I had pain and pins and needles in that hand. There were several nurses in the building at the time and I was sent to exactly zero of them. As soon as the maintenance guy Marcus came to have a look at it, he could see that the shade was a little bit too snug on the lamp and had pulled away some of the insulating material so it was definitely a faulty lamp. I was still raging hard over the whole thing because they just didn’t do due diligence, they didn’t do the caring side of employment and I want to f*** them up over it.