New Cranky Reasons #3: Incompetence!

Let's just say it right here and now: I'm good at everything I do (except for handyman projects). Skip often comments that no one does (insert task here) better than me. Which strikes me as funny since I'm the amateur and she has lots of people helping her who are paid professionals.

As noted before, we had to switch to a new agency for visiting nurses and home health aides when Skip came out of the hospital because of the need for IV administration support. We were told the agency Skip had been using for many years did not have that service so we switched over to another provider. We now have home health aides from the new agency M-F for 2 hours a day. They are a lot like the aides from the other agency, except the physical therapist from the new outfit trained them on range of motion exercises for Skip, so they are helping her with that every day. A definite upgrade in my book.

The 5 day a week visits are divided between 2 aides. The one who comes twice a week, MG, is very nice and has figured out that Skip is high maintenance but easy to tease about it. They've developed a good rapport. When MG is here, I can hear the two of them chatting away during Skip's bath. MG has been to the house about 10 times so far. On her 2nd or 3rd visit, when she was emptying Skip's catheter drainage bag, she neglected to close the bag's nozzle. Because the bag was hanging low, just above the rug, it was somewhat out of sight and the problem wasn't discovered for 18 hours! During that entire time, pee was dripping onto the rug. (To add to the annoyance, the rug that was dripped on is an oriental carpet once owned by my great-grandfather.)

I have never called an agency to complain about an aide. But, I had to in this case because they were going to have to reimburse us for the rug cleaning. The next time MG came, she had been spoken to at the office and was quite contrite, apologized and swore it would never happen again. Apparently, never is about 4 weeks long because she did it again yesterday! This morning, while I had the rug rolled up, cleaning the floor, cleaning the rug, getting towels under the rug to protect the floor while the rug dried, etc., I was having a good ol' rant. I was cranky! This woman has been a home health aide for more than 10 years. She must empty drainage bags multiple times a day for multiple clients every single day of work. How does she not close a nozzle twice in 10 visits? Apparently, we can't trust her to do this task right so I'll have to take care of emptying the bag on the days she comes.

We hadn't had the rug professionally cleaned from the first incident yet (I gave it a good cleaning and drying at the time) because we were waiting for Skip to be out of bed and for my brother to come over and help me with furniture moving and rolling it up. Those two events haven't occurred together yet. We haven't decided yet if we're going to inform the agency of the 2nd occurrence. We'll definitely tell MG when next she comes. But, unless we decide we want to ask to have MG be replaced by another aide, we probably won't give her agency a call about it.