noise."A Day at Other Work · 12:55am Apr 6th, 2020
It’s not too often that I talk about other work, but I thought y’all would enjoy how a memorable shift went down.
I may or may not have mentioned in a previous blog post that the group homes are locked down. No visitors, nobody goes out into the public at large unless it’s absolutely necessary. This of course weighs heavily on some of our residents who are used to having more freedoms, who are used to doing more things.
As you can imagine, these restrictions are hard to explain to some of our residents. Heck, people who are nominally fully-functioning adults have difficulty with the ideas of social distancing and self-isolation and whatnot.
In our system, at least, there is limited authority that staff has over residents. We can’t, for example, lock them in the house and we can’t physically restrain them unless there is an immediate risk to life and limb. There are more secure facilities for that.
I should also mention that I’m a relief staff, which means that I go to lots of different houses to cover for unfilled shifts. I’m more regular at some houses than others, so my familiarity with residents ranges from BFF to ‘I’ve heard of them.’
So I arrived at what I hoped was going to be a pretty casual shift. The house had two residents who stayed there full-time, and one who generally only stayed the night; all three of them were largely undemanding.
Of course, given the lockdown, that third person now had to stay in the home 24/7, and he wasn’t exactly thrilled about it.
There was also a fourth person, who has been in and out of our care in the last few years. Recently, she was out; now she’s back in. And she’s going to be the focus of this blog--everybody else was lovely the entire shift (well, mostly; one of the other guys will make a couple of brief, memorable cameos).
Breakfast was nearly done by the time I arrived for my shift. Three of the four had eaten; the fourth was contemplating his oatmeal perhaps in the hopes it would turn into something he liked better. He’s an interesting guy, he’s got a very obvious happy face and I haven’t worked with him enough to know his other moods all that well, or how he typically communicates. [Y’all need to remind me to talk about this, ‘cause it’s a good lesson for people writing first-contact stuff.] He’s non-verbal.
He also has his clothes locked in the basement because one of the other residents likes to steal them, facts I was unaware of until he came downstairs from his morning shower naked as a jaybird and walked right into the kitchen and then stood by the basement door waiting for me to open it. Since I didn’t know that’s what he wanted, I told him to go back upstairs and get dressed, and I’d imagine he was confused by those instructions, but he did go back upstairs, and the other staff wound up getting his clothes for him and took them upstairs.
The girl who made my shift memorable was also up in her room, and came downstairs not long after. She complained that she had a sore throat.
Now, that’s the kind of thing that sends alarm bells clanging, especially when you’re already on lockdown. However, after some discussion with the regular staff, she had been looked at already--had, in fact, sought medical attention twice in the last two days, and she had some over-the-counter throat lozenges to help. She had no other symptoms of coronavirus, something we were monitoring carefully.
She also had a scheduled appointment in a couple of days with her regular physician and plans to take her sooner if her sore throat didn’t improve by the next day. And, I should mention [this will be important later] the local hospital had threatened to have her arrested if she showed up in the ER again with nothing wrong with her. That was where she’d gotten her medical attention twice in the last two days.
In order to distract her, I agreed to take her and the other guy who normally doesn’t stay home on a van ride. It’d get them out of the house for a while, give them something to do (even if it was just watching scenery pass by). Overall, that went well. The weather was kind of miserable, but we were in a car, so that didn’t matter so much.
About a half hour after we got back, I was in the kitchen getting ready for lunch when the phone rang. It was the local 911 dispatcher, calling to tell me that she’d just called 911 and wanted the police to transport her to ES (basically, the ER for mental health issues) and that they weren’t interested in doing it because it was a waste of time and resources and why couldn’t we?
So I took her to ES.
We had to run a battery of tests to get in, and I stayed by the entrance door and didn’t touch anything.
She told them she’d had a sore throat (which was likely true) and that she’d had a seizure (which was probably not*) and ES said that that was something that they couldn’t deal with and that I needed to take her to the hospital.
Which, given the current situation, is the very last place you want to be unless it really is an emergency.
I called the house manager and got him up to speed on the developments, and drove her to the hospital. It was the third or fourth call he’d gotten from us thus far that day, and I’m sure he was thrilled, especially since it was his day off.
I also asked if he wanted me to go back home first and get the med books (they have all her prescriptions, allergies, and other pertinent medical information). He said that there was no need because the hospital already had all that information, since they’d seen her yesterday.
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*I say ‘probably not,’ because she never mentioned having a seizure to any of the hospital staff; I think if her goal had been to get admitted to the hospital or if she’d actually had a seizure, she would have told them.
I do my best to avoid going to hospitals, so I can’t say if the metal detector and security guards by the ER were normal. The little nurse station that was set up to do a quick triage of patients as they came in was not.
They also had a strict ‘no visitors’ policy, understandably, and that’s where things started to turn interesting. They initially didn’t want to let me in, but luckily I had my ID badge. They did accidentally start a work order for me (or whatever they call those in hospitals). We all got face masks.
She got a quick exam in one room while I hung out by the door to be there and also respect her privacy. Then she got sent to a different room.
ERs aren’t always the quietest places, and I not only overheard a rather loud discussion with an older gentleman about his medical options for a broken limb (I think he was hard of hearing, given how often the surgeons repeated what they’d just said, but louder), I also heard one of the doctors who was examining my resident’s file mutter ‘didn’t we say we were going to have her arrested if she came back?’ I didn’t hear what the nurses said, but I was thinking that my shift was about to get even more interesting.
She didn’t get arrested; she got discharged after a stern talking-to from the doctor, who told her that there was nothing physically wrong with her based on all the tests that they’d done, and that it was safer for everyone--especially her--if she were to see her primary care physician for minor health complaints, rather than visiting the ER. They gave her discharge paperwork, and had highlighted ‘see your normal physician.’
We went back home, and I ate a late lunch and took a few minutes to calm myself down. The other morning staff left, and the afternoon staff came in. She went on a walk, even though she wasn’t supposed to.
And she only made it to the end of the block before she ‘fell down’ and ‘twisted her ankle.’ Nobody saw this happen--she walked out of eyesight of the house first, then called the house on her cell phone and said it had happened.
It’s entirely possible she called 911 first and tried to get an ambulance and the dispatcher told her to call for her staff, I don’t know. I didn’t think of that at the time, but now that I’m writing up the blog, I could see her doing that.
So the afternoon staff took the car and picked her up and brought her back to the house and put an ice pack on her ankle and I’m while I don’t know for sure, I think there’s a good chance that she asked him to take her to the ER or redi-care, and he talked her out of it.
Things calmed down, and the other staff said he was going to take the two guys who hadn’t been out yet on a van ride. She want upstairs to take a shower, and I started making dinner, enjoying at least a few minutes to myself. Figured she couldn’t be getting in trouble when she was in the shower, which it turns out was a foolish thing to think.
I was partway done with dinner when she came downstairs. She’d scratched up her arm with a paperclip, and claimed that she was trying to commit suicide. Really minor scratches, no blood whatsoever.
Now, I want to say here that while we do take actual self-harm attempts seriously, we’re a bit jaded when residents try to use that to get attention. One guy I worked with got frustrated one day, I can’t remember why, stuck his head in the freezer, and said he was going to kill himself. I told him, ‘good luck,’ and then after he got bored with having his head in the freezer (which wasn’t much more than a minute), we had a proper conversation and got him calmed down. To me, that made more sense than trying to drag him away from the fridge. I honestly don’t think that you could even give yourself frostbite by sticking your head into a consumer grade freezer, certainly not with the door open.
So I asked her to give me the paperclip, which she wouldn’t, and she asked me if I could call the on-call for her, which I was more than happy to do. I kept on preparing dinner, but also kept a good ear on the phone conversation.
The gist of the conversation was that she should go to her room and watch a movie, she should give me the paperclip, and if she was unsatisfied with talking to me, she should talk to the other staff when he got back from the van ride.
She said she would, gave me the paperclip, and went upstairs to her room, but she didn’t watch a movie.
She called 911.
This time, they did send a police car.
That led to a fun conversation between her, me, the police officers, and the two paramedics who showed up later. One of the officers had transported her previously, and was aware of at least one of her 911 calls. He was frustrated that I couldn’t do anything about her calling 911, but I legit can’t. The only thing the police could really do was to transport her to ES or to jail, and they didn’t want to do either, and it wasn’t a paramedics problem.
Everyone tried to convince her that she should talk over her issues with staff or her caseworker or go back to ES or literally anything besides call 911.
Between the police and the paramedics, and perhaps the other staff returning home, she finally calmed down, and for the last hour and a half of my shift, she sat on the couch eating Doritos.
Also, the non-verbal guy took another shower (he had an accident in his pants) and then wandered downstairs naked again. Which, honestly, put a bit of levity into a shift that very much needed it.
You know, I've never had anybody get naked at my job. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
....wow, talk about a hell of a night.
5236658
Depends on "What is your job?"
Never worked in a home but for some reason I know exactly how this shift felt... I'm not sure how I feel about the fact I've had to deal with most of that drama as security despite
neveronly once having worked a shift in a group home (and that wasn't where this sort of stuff happened to me.)5236670 IT support. We deal with a lot of bare metal, though.
Sometimes, the people that you feel the most sympathy for in the abstract are the ones that you find hardest to tolerate in person
I'll read this full blog later, but I just want to say that Mad Hotaru, who drew a lot of these pictures, is one of my absolute favorite pony artists (and also one of the few people with a giraffe OC!) Definitely check out more of their stuff! They also drew this amazingly heartbreaking picture:
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/2/12/241243.png
5236658
Shame (probably), it really spices things up.
True fact, though: I figured I’d never get the chance to say “Put some clothes on,” not being a parent and all . . . turns out I’ve had plenty of opportunities to say that. Also “Don’t eat that.”
5236666
Not one of the worst ones--nobody was flipping tables while naked, for example. But certainly interesting enough that I thought y’all would enjoy reading about it.
5236697
Honestly, in some ways the main difference between our jobs is that I know going into work that the people I’ll be working with face certain mental challenges, where you get to find that out on a case-by-case basis.
Also, I usually have the advantage of working with people I’ve worked with for years, and that helps a lot. It’s a lot different--and scarier, sometimes--when it’s somebody new, when you don’t know what’s going to set them off or how far they might go. You don’t even always know how they might communicate or how much they might understand.
5236713
Agreed.
5236728
I figured he (I assume) was a good source for the Screw Loose images, because they really are great. And also because somebody might notice that the green unicorn got bit in the ear and then ask if I’ve ever been bitten by a resident.
Yes.
That is one of the greatest pony pictures ever. I think I used it in a blog or a comment regarding the horrors of war at some time in the past.
This didn’t get you in trouble?
5236786
Well, I mean, putting your head in a freezer isn't really terribly likely to ever be fatal.
5236786
No; as 5236790 says, you can’t really kill yourself by putting your head in a freezer. Any more than I do anything about the guy who tells me he’s going to get his charazard to kick my ass. (I suppose if he does, joke’s on me...) Had it been a legitimate attempt, that would be a different story . . . but in general, the way you deal with genuine suicide attempts is first remove the immediate threat if there is one, and then you try to talk it out however you have to, or at least that’s my understanding. In this case, the freezer was hardly an immediate threat. If he’d gone for something else which might be harmful, say started hitting himself with a frying pan or tried to put his hand on the hot stove, that would have required more intervention.
A lot of times with developmentally disabled adults, having them away from whatever set them off for a while helps them to calm down, to self-regulate, and then you can talk it over, take them to ES, give them a PRN for agitation, etc. Used to do that all the time with a guy who’d threaten to elope whenever he got mad; I’d follow him outside and talk to him for a bit, get him to come back inside, and pretty soon he’d forget about whatever it was that set him off in the first place and be thinking about what was for dinner or what he wanted to watch on TV or what have you.
5236750
I actually have a friend who does what you're doing for a living, she just moved from part-time to full time. So now I get double the stories like this.
It never stops being scary, you learn to cold-read people a bit better and DEFINITELY learn the importance of maintaining your spacing.
Thanks for the story and insight (in both the blog and comments).
Having responded to crisis calls like this, I fully get all of this. And it sounds like it was an exciting day!
Thanks for sharing. These are stories that are... well, the kind that are funny, but make you feel sorta sad at the same time.
5236754
Have you ever been bitten by a resident?
I hate being in a situation where a person is dead-set on doing something bad or dumb and I'm powerless to prevent it but have to watch anyway.
On a related note, I suspect I wouldn't make a great parent.
With a life that gives you stories like this and your auto blogs, it's a good thing you have the skills to write about them.
Thanks for doing the jobs that would most likely send the average person off the deep end. I hope writing these stories are therapeutic.
5236798
You better stay healthy Mister, I still want to visit my favorite author one day.
5236747
That I did, and I was wincing in sympathy throughout.
I have an idea you should write a story about a pony that works in a group home
...guess main female character in this story wanted some kind of attention, but only from specific group of people, for some reason? I can't say this not happen to me (or probably other humans... and others). But I have very little idea how to deal even with normal (for most) social contacts, it seems ...
I think if there ever be award for 'Pony on Earth' type of living {helping others in non-trivial situations} - I know at least two nominates, one of them being you, Admiral .... Unfortunately, not much more than two (because living this for real quite hard)
I completely understand what you went through. I work overnights at a six bed house and the lockdown has completely messed with all my individuals sleep schedules. Luckily I’ve only got one with self Injurious behavior and there is a mitt shirt plan in place and we’ve got magnetic locks due to problems with elopement.
5236812
Yay! The fun has been doubled!
On the one hand, there’s typically a smaller range of things that our residents will do, on the other, what they think of as a logical next step is far different from what the public at large does. And yeah, keeping your space and having an out are always good options.
One of the biggest potential issues is when one resident has a meltdown, that can trigger other residents, and that’s when it gets really interesting. :P
5236835
You’re welcome!
5236855
Honestly, it wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the whole coronavirus thing. Any other time, I wouldn’t have been upset with sitting with her in the hospital for a couple of hours.
The time I got to escort everybody out of the house at 2am because the fire alarm was going off was a really exciting night, too. One guy was wandering through the backyard without his pants, another guy was taking out his frustrations on the patio furniture, and the guy who really likes licking things was licking my arm.
5236864
That’s one of the reasons I don’t blog about specific experiences there, generally. They just have that feel where it’s both funny and sad and frustrating, all in one.
Plus, it’s a bit harder for the average reader to understand the context, whereas me whacking something with a wrench is easy enough to picture.
5236877
I’ve been bitten, spit on, head butted, punched, kicked, sworn at, had a shirt torn off, and been licked . . . on the plus side, nobody’s peed on me yet.
5236891
It depends on who it is and what they’re trying to do. I once bet a former mechanic co-worker who I had no love for that he couldn’t squeeze a lightbulb hard enough to break it.
Sadly, he didn’t take the bet.
It’s therapeutic! And entertaining for the masses.
5236930
They are! Although I’ll be honest, most of the time I don’t wind up getting so frustrated at someone’s behavior. Now the shop, on the other hand . . . pretty much anything with the tag ‘my manager is an idiot’ is therapy for me.
5236985
I’ll do my darndest.
5236988
I’ve thought about it before. Almost wrote one for my collection of ponies working on Earth, but then didn’t.
There’s occasional passing mentions of it in OPP (only occasional).
5237377
That’s what I’m thinking, too. I don’t know why.
We have another resident I work with occasionally who sometimes elopes (runs away) at night. Luckily, he really likes firetrucks and fire men, and he’ll typically walk to the nearest fire station. They know who he is, so they’ll bring him back.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m less good at handling face-to-face interactions with ‘normal’ people, as well. Like, sometimes some of my group home instincts kick in.
I know a lot of us here do difficult jobs to the betterment of society. One of my followers is a crisis counselor, for example, so she’s the one who shows up when things really go pear-shaped in somebody’s life.
5237405
Huh, you wouldn’t think it would, although I suppose not having a routine does that. We’ve got one guy in one of our houses who will often stay up half the night when he doesn’t have any programming in the morning. And another guy who doesn’t want to leave the house anyway, so in that regard he’s okay with quarantine, but he really loves his college sports and that’s been really hard on him. Last time I worked with him, he didn’t want to come out of his room at all.
Self-injurious behavior is the worst. We had a guy who would swallow things (he was eventually transferred to a more secure facility) and he was smart enough to hide things, so it was a constant battle to keep things away from him that he could swallow, and of course he’d always manage to get something sooner or later. He almost died on a shift I was working when he swallowed a spoon.
The worst part is that the more you took away from him, the more he’d misbehave, so it was an endless loop.
5237459
Oh, this ... at some point I was fairly close to captive dolphins/belugas here in Spb, and I definitely had my reasons to worry about them eating unediable things. It all related strangely in my head - I started from just curiosity over some claims about dolphin speech/language/mind, and ended up ..reading a lot more, trying to defend them (captives) from both active exploitation and effects of confinement itself, meet few dogs (including few quite sad, and probably even a bit psychotic dogs), and made full circle realizing humans also don't have endless compensatory mechanisms, so yeah, they can break down like other non-humans too ... and now I re-call some passages related to metal health in both 'Mind of the dolphin' by Lilly and other book from same era (but still relevant today), 'Sane society' by Fromm .... and ..... well, its more complex than I can type in.
So, thanks again for actually caring, day-to-day, about beings who might be quite hard to care about.
5237428
That hasn't ever happened to me outside of events with alcohol, the whole chain reaction thing. In fact I usually have the opposite. Usually one of the people will try to calm the other(s) down. Especially the regulars because they know I'm not going to be a dick about it or get the cops involved unless they get dumb and threaten me or full out decide they aren't leaving.
But when people are drinking the peanut gallery can cause a lot of problems during an ejection, either they stand up for some guy we're tossing or they'll call out "you can take him" and the guy will try to take us on... just generally drunks making things worse.... I do not miss working nightclubs and bars.
5237447
What’s OPP?
5237668
Original Poster's Post
Thanks for all you do Admiral. You're definitely in the "Good Human" category.
5237668
"Onto the Pony Planet" by Admiral Biscut.
5237508
5237619
Yeah, I can see that . . . had a few interactions with drunk people when I drove wrecker and they were always memorable. :P
The difficult thing with the developmentally disabled is that there are different things that set them off, so one guy might get upset at a commotion, for example, and now he’s in the mix, too.
The good news is that most of our homes are only for a few residents, which at least limits how many people add to the chaos at any given time.
5237668
Closet Brony wins this one