Dear Diary,
I'm glad you exist. You understand me. If I disagreed with you in a factual discussion, you wouldn't insist on your opinion and harp on it without questioning it.
I would have forgotten something, I hear that several times a day. Although the balance 100% is „Patrick hasn't forgotten anything, but the carer has made a mistake“. Don't you ever get embarrassed by that? That would be too stupid for me.
But because you lend me your ear when I have something to say, you know what's going on in my mind right now. For weeks now, not a day goes by that I don't get upset with one of my carers. It's often because of a nursing mistake, which hasn't happened for the first time, but that doesn't make it any better. Nor is it a trivial matter when they make a mistake with my medication for the third week in a row and give me double, or possibly triple, doses of softeners and laxatives again.My stomach is going to explode one day if we don't get this medication sorted out soon once and for all.
What bothers me the most is that my carers - as was the case with other care services in the past - are kind-hearted people. But where things don't fit professionally, they have to be corrected. And to do this, it's necessary to admit the mistake first and not make up new excuses for every screw-up. No kidding, some of my carers are lost storytellers. I have to deliberately exaggerate this to make it clear how ridiculous and presumptuous I find it when people think they are questioning my ability to think and remember things. Or tell me the same life story over and over again. Nobody else seems to want to understand.
But I would like to give you one piece of well-intentioned advice right now. That's what I've been thinking so often lately.
The more often and intensively someone emphasises that it wasn't him, the less likely this becomes.
The saying can be applied to so many situations. Want some examples? Please:
- I have nothing against black people. But as a black man you get everything.
- I never took any whiskey bottles home from you.
- I cleaned the whole kitchen, it was all soiled.
- I kept checking on you, but you always sleep like a rock with me.
- Don't worry, I can work.
- I have nothing against gays, but I would forbid it for my children.
- We are not in it for the money.
- I always took very little and always told you. But your girlfriend, she destroys everything.
- I am not against vaccination, but...
- I've never had breakfast here.
- I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but Corona... and Bill Gates...
- I looked closely at your eyes and you were wrong. You said „No.“ have you forgotten?
- I really don't want to force you to have a PEG, but...
- I really don't want to force you into the cannula, but...
- I always leave on time, but there is so much traffic every time.
In recent weeks, I have often found myself asking myself an interesting question. Why I still haven't actually resigned and changed care providers. Literally the question is interesting, not the answer.
For weeks, I asked myself whether I shouldn't change care provider. Recently, this question has increasingly been replaced by the question „why not?“ instead of whether.
So when I look at this question, the sky above Grünwald looks pretty gloomy for the current provider. You heard me right, provider. After all our experiences in recent years, I think we need a „humble“ attitude to care on both sides. Scho right, I'm not starting a fundamental debate on this today. But it cannot be denied that we are increasingly facing an excess demand in the care sector. Without this massive imbalance in the market, many care services would probably not be able to exist at all. If I had behaved even remotely as unprofessionally and unfriendly towards customers in one of my companies, they would have put us in our place. Imagine if I had written to the customer the kind of things that managers of care services have thrown at me. It wouldn't have taken 20 minutes for my private phone to ring at home on a Sunday morning, which reminds me of the tone of voice I allow myself.
In care, however, we seem to have got used to being screwed from top to bottom. While the work of care workers is rewarded and respected far too little on the one hand, the provider of care services is apparently allowed to do anything. They can burn out their employees and fleece their customers.
I won't do either of those things any more. I don't understand why highly motivated carers have to go on their crutches after six months because they have just been scheduled to work 220 hours - plus cover for sick colleagues and without being paid appropriately (or at all). And I don't see why, even in my condition, I still have to pay €1,809.24 a month to my statutory health insurance and then beg some care service to take me and the well over €300,000 a year from my health insurance. That's totally wrong. Something is going very wrong in Germany.
And that brings me to my very basic dilemma from the title of this post. The fish stinks from the head down. So if everything was great with my carers, there would be nothing to stop me taking them all with me and simply resigning from the care service. If only there wasn't a „But...“, and what a „But...“. I can only describe the quality of my care as poor at best. It wouldn't be right to blame the management alone. I have no sympathy for carers who have two part-time jobs and can't get off their arses for me. Anyone who can identify with one or more of the above statements ("I'm not against vaccination, but...") needs to think about whether they want to continue to accompany and support me. Or not. Because one thing must be clear to everyone. I will no longer have these constant discussions in future.
