My week went well overall. My mom is in a good phase and is engaging when we are there. My dad and her were able to go out every day and sit in the sun for a bit. There is a little bit of angst over certain people sitting in certain places. There may not be assigned seating, but the staff has to be careful about who sits with whom because of personalities. I do not envy the staff their jobs as there is always something going on. I mentioned last week that the staff had a car wash and they raised $345.00 for Alzheimers - which was great as they only charged $5.00 a car. They have a cupcake competition coming up and one other event as part of the fund raising. The only thing that drives me crazy at the nursing home is the laundry. I can't stand when my mom's clothes disappear, she is wearing some other person's clothes (she has plenty of her own) or someone else is wearing her clothes. The laundry person does not pay attention to the names when she is returning the items and the staff just knows it's in the closet. I went through her closet today and took a few things out of it and then found a bunch of her clothes rolled up on the bottom (not sure what that means). You know they will be hearing about this stuff tomorrow when the regular staff is there. The only other thing that drives me crazy is when a patient needs to use the restroom. Many are not mobile and they are at the mercy of an available attendant. Some days like today when they are a little shorthanded patients can wait up to 25 minutes before someone takes them. I feel horrible about it as I want to shout out how would you feel if needed to go and you don't want to mess yourself? I think even the recreation person was a little frustrated by the lack of attention today. Something else the staff will hear about this week. Those of you that know me know I've been jotting notes about things that I feel need to be addressed.
I was able to provide a CNA with a fun birthday memory this past week. She turned 25 and I thought she deserves a cake. Contacted a local bakery that I follow on FB and they created a fabulous cake for me at the last minute. The CNA was shocked and she shared her cake with everyone. I must say it was DELICIOUS! She just beamed to know a patient's family did that for her. It made my week to make her happy. Have you made someone's day unexpectedly? Or, has someone made your day?
We are working to reduce the storage units my dad has. Slowly, but surely items are being shifted. My sister brought stuff the other day and almost every item he said, needs to go into the houses. I thought, why did you get a storage unit if everything needs to come into the house? He's afraid to let me know go through stuff because as he reminds me every day, he can't find stuff because I got rid of it a couple of years ago. We have the same discussion almost every day...LOL!!! I think my dad had me at the grocery store 3 times this past week. We went to a farm stand yesterday and got fresh tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini and squash. Good meals are coming out of these items. I hope you've had a chance to enjoy the summer harvest.
I finally got up the nerve to reach out to a coaching colleague about the possibility of working together in the future. I am excited about trying to see what comes out of the contact. I'll let you know what happens.
I finished reading a Danielle Steel novel this past week - The Sins of the Mother. It was a good read and only took a few days.
I am going to leave it here for today. I hope you have a great week. Enjoy life! Take care. Chat soon.
Marie
“You can have everything you want in life if you just help enough people get what they want in life.” – Zig Ziglar
“We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.” – Jesse Owens
Referrals are always appreciated.