After witnessing a painful incident, Kai and his mother decided that they could do a better job themselves.
Transcript
So one of them, one of the nurses tightened it, and then when they came the second time, this new nurse was—I thought that she was in a rush. And she ripped, I’m not saying that she ripped it, but she was very quickly, quick to take the bandage off and she ripped skin off. And I remember that was… there were different moments in my experience as a youth-caregiver that were excruciating, like seeing his leg like that. But to hear my dad scream and be in pain, that was—I can still hear it. Like, it’s just the most excruciating thing you have to hear, especially when you’re supposed to be in the best of care with home healthcare. Like, they’re supposed to be doing their job, right? And the thing is, I’ve had this discussion with other former caregivers, how we do a better job. And I’m not saying that… I’m not boasting, but we do a better job, and we don’t have degrees. We don’t have… we’re not being paid to do this; this is what we do on a daily basis. And I’ve done his dressing before, and I don’t want to do it, but I have to do it. And I have to admit, I do a better job than somebody who was actually getting paid to do it.
So have you explored why you think you do a better job, or why is that?
I think—and I notice with a lot of nurses, like I notice that they do do this, but not enough—I think you’ve got to get to know your…and it’s not like you get a chance to really get to know your patient, but just get to know them, their likes and dislikes. I know that dad liked me to warm up his cream a little bit by like rubbing my hands together, because usually they would just pop it up and it would be really cold. So just getting to know their likes or dislikes, and not rushing; that’s the big thing. You can’t rush, especially with this type of injury. You have to just be very patient. […] You have to go with the flow. Like, you just can’t touch him with full strength; you have to just… you’ve got to be very gentle with people like that. So, we were done with that, Like, that was enough for us. We decided that we would just do this on our own.
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