Fun with Attendants
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about living independently in the community and how that can be facilitated by attendants. These are people whose job is to be your hands and feet, doing things that you cannot do yourself or that would take an unreasonable amount of time or effort to do. In
Life with staff can be interesting. Once you learn how to direct you care - in other words, you don't ask somebody to cook you a pork chop, you direct them through each step of the process - it's pretty easy and as long as you and they remember to be polite and interact as decent people, things are relatively painless. Relatively. Because there are snags that come from dealing with people and their individual foibles, snags that come from being pulled into agency/staff politics, snags of a different sort that you may get to experience if you're unlucky. Most abuse of people with disabilities is done by caregivers and as I'm fond of saying, there are two kinds of people who choose this kind of job: those who genuinely want to help and those who like the power.
Today, however, is not a polemic about abuse, because I simply don't have the shoulder power to write that much. Today, I thought I would share a couple of moments from living with attendants.
Moment #1: the attendant and I had been chatting through my shower, because once they become familiar with your routine, you end up talking about other things. This particular day, we talked about religion. Which led to a shining moment of revelation. She very earnestly explained to me that there was a reason I had a disability and when I inquired what other than my RA may have had an impact, she told me that it was because my parents or grandparents had done something bad. Wha??? Oh yes, the Bible said so.
I changed the subject.
Moment #2: I asked how the attendant (someone different than the star of moment #1) was doing and as she says "I'm alive, I'm walking around, I can do things".
As she's unpacking the groceries in my backpack that I cannot put away myself.
I'm still shaking my head over that one.
Comments
Exactly. The shortcomings of this life give us a chance to serve each other and to learn compassion.
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<p>There are certain basic tenants that provide the foundation for all Hands Together volunteer programs.
We believe in a philosophy of service that primarily emphasizes respect and dignity toward the people we serve in Haiti.We believe that serving as a volunteer in Haiti is a privilege.We recognize that volunteering with Hands Together will be physically and emotionally demanding.We embrace a spirituality that emphasizes a belief and trust in a God who loves us all equally (i.e. Americans and Haitians together).ALL LOVED EQUALLY.
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Please don't tax yourself to write about this now; there's no urgency on my part. I also don't want to ask you to post more if you'd prefer to keep more of this interaction with employees private. But I'm interested in learning as much as you want to say about having attendants.
#2 Sounds like she was doing that cack-handed able-bodied thing people do when trying to make disabled people feel better by trying to show us they appreciate being able bodied and all they do is pile on the insulting assumtions that we don't like our lives and ourselves just fine, thus digging themselves a deeper hole! It's always puzzled me why AB's feel the need to do that. I wonder if it's awkwardness in our presence. Even if they'd just say 'I have never met a disabled person before and I don't know what to say!' that would be so refreshing.
I love little kids because they just walk up to you and say 'Hello! My name's **** why are you in a wheelchair?'. LOL
But like I said, I have tomorrow off and can afford to be nice.
(My daughter, what with her Asperger's, speaks in cliches It's part of that "overly formal and pedantic speech'' that is a hallmark. I tend to forgive that a lot.)
It could also be a good sign, that she's not looking at you as disabled, but simply as a person, even though she's putting away your groceries, because you are just the person she's chatting with. Putting away the groceries is her job, not your need...
Or maybe she's an idiot...
The first example....well.....I have a standard "the deer in my neighborhood are really smart, look at what this fawn did" story I use to change the subject when necessary.
Re #2: I too am inclined to give the benefit of the doubt here, having suffered numerous cases of athlete's uvula myself. Often the realization hits me immediately, sometimes a few hours later, and in either case it causes insomnia for years to come.
As for 2, I liken that saying "see you later " to the vision impaired. Uhm, oh, right, well, hm.....oops. Whether the idiocy is transient or chronic is for you to judge. There is a weird local radio station, called KPIG out here. One of the DJs plays a song with a lyric that says 'when I wake up in the morning, I know it will be good, if I stick out my elbows and I don't bump wood..."
Wow. Just wow. Do you have to deal with her again?
As for the second person - really stupid thing to say. Thoughtless, for sure. And I hope it hit her later exactly what it was she'd said.
#1 is why I hate people.
#2 -- I've said similar, though more along the lines of, "well, I'm not dead so it could be worse..."
But still, yeah... hate people.