WTH!

Both our night time caregivers are in the hospital now! The second one went Wednesday when she was having all kinds of strange things happening to her. Turns out her blood sugar was 805! OMG! She had no idea that she was a diabetic. She will be back to work next week. In the meantime, our daytime caregiver has found someone to fill in for the other night caregiver, so, if our one that had surgery Friday is ever able to come back, we will have another one that is already trained to fill in when necessary. She cares for a man every day M-F and is coming to Mom's at 10:30. Tough duty, but we told her she can take naps in between checking on Mom. We have two caregivers that have other jobs. Don't know how they do it, but they are much younger than me.

On the bright side, my brother got a new trap and finally caught two coons that were eating our corn! That's a total of 3! Since then, there have been none in the corn! He gave those to someone who wanted them to cook! EWWWW! I'm not eating coon!

What next!

We hired another night caregiver today to fill in for the one who had emergency surgery on Friday. The downside is that no one would do it for the $7.25 that we were paying, which means that everyone will be getting a raise. The daytime caregivers do so much more than the night caregivers because they have to fix meals, give baths, wash clothes, etc. The night people only have to change her and turn her every two hours. They can recline and rest  in between those times. Yesterday, I was completely stressed out about it because I worry about what we are going to do when Mom's money runs out. The daytime caregivers have been getting $10 an hour, but I'm sure we will have to raise that to $11 now. I just hope her money doesn't run out before she does!

 

Time to uncork a new bottle!

EXACTLY!

Sooner rather than later!

Oh, my goodness!

When I got to Mom's yesterday, my brother told me that the caregiver who had been with her all night went straight to the ER from there. She has a hole in the small intestine and had emergency surgery yesterday. They ended up removing half her colon. Haven't heard yet exactly what the problem was. Cancer was a possibility, but I have not been told if that is what it was. That poor woman had been in pain all night and didn't call either me or my brother so she could go on to the ER. I feel bad that she didn't do that. Don't want to go visit her today because I know the second day is the worst, but I did send some flowers from our family.

The coons have found our corn and the deer and found the sweet potatoes. Traps have been set every night for the coons, but only one has been caught. They continue to manage to get the marshmallows out of the trap without tripping it. We have no idea how! The potatoes have been surrounded by reflector tape as of yesterday, which we have been told is a deterrent to deer. Deer also like okra, so it will probably be next!!! It's not producing yet, but it will have some ready by next week if the deer let us have any of it.

Holy CRAP!

I am smack dab in the middle of the book and movie, The Help, in real life! There is definitely a network that tends to undermine the caregivers. My brother, who writes the checks, finally told the main caregiver on Friday that it was not right for her to put down 8 hours every day when she never gets there at 7 and never has. We just overlooked it during school because she has children that she has to get to school. That's fine, but don't put down that you worked 8 hours when you clearly didn't! My brother goes over every morning to check on Mom and he is always there before the caregiver and many times goes ahead and gets Mom out of bed. Well, the caregiver didn't like him reprimanding her (very gently, because we know how defensive she is). She called one of the night caregivers and told her that my brother was checking on her in the middle of the night to make sure she was doing her job. He's hiding out in the woods and watching the house. What a bunch of crap! That caregiver called and got me instead of my brother. She just wanted to know why he was watching her because she does her job and she is even there early every time. I calmed her down and told her that there was not an ounce of truth to that. The day time caregiver is just trying to start mess because she was busted and wants to bring everyone else into the fray! I made her understand that if we had an issue with her, we would approach her directly...not someone else! We love the night caregivers because they do their job and do the 8 hours they are paid for. What a bunch of crap! We have ignored the indiscretions of the daytime caregiver because we know how defensive and sensitive she is and we are afraid she would take it out on our mom, but it adds up significantly when you get paid for 8 hours every day and you have only worked 71/2 every day or less! I guess it just finally got to my brother enough to bring it up. It just pisses me off that she tries to involve the other caregivers. I would like to fire her ass and keep the others, but it is too hard to find a replacement.

The night caregiver that called me told me not to mention it to the caregiver who started this mess or to my brother, so I didn't. My brother would really be mad if he knew what the daytime caregiver was doing and the lies she is telling about him.
My brother is a rock star! Yesterday, he got a 5 gallon bucket of corn ready to cut off the cob and freeze. I cut it all off and heated it, cooled it and packaged it. He watched how I did it. I talked to him a few minutes ago and he had picked, shucked, silked, cut off, heated, cooled and packaged another 5 gallon bucket by himself. Not many men would even begin to do this! He did it at Mom's house so he could be with her as well.

I'm still here!