Out of commission for awhile

Since the part time Malay caregiver I trained for over a year (to cover my permcath dressing while showering) has been on medical leave for the past 2 months, her company (C ) had to outsource to another company (H ) due to manpower shortage.

But unfortunately the H company part time staff often did not follow my instructions, made my dressing wet on a few occasions and caused me to fell ill for a couple of weeks. Thus I had to come to the hard decision to ask the government appointed board to arrange for me to be transferred to another new service provider (A ) that have full time staff trained to care for dialysis patients with dressing. Now I will have to wait for 2-4 weeks for the transfer to be done while I am left without a part time caregiver as this type of service is heavily subsidized by the board. (Home Personal Care & housekeeping)

Well, I can't wait for my regular Malay caregiver to be back to work as her broken wrist injury might take longer to heal. She told me her doctor said at least 4-6 months she can't over exert her wrist again. Beside, I am concerned about her mental & emotional states too since she is undergoing a divorce and she wasn't able to concentrate on her tasks prior to this injury incident too. I also felt that she needed time to settle her own domestic matters and recovered from her injury first.

Thinking through, I have to put my health as priority too as H company doesn't train their part time staff and their inexperience can caused fatality to me. Because any infection to the permcath can go straight to the heart and cause death/complications within a few days. And H company doesn't follow up if their ad hoc staff picked up the sessions or not. So I ended up waiting in vain for their staff to appear at my door step on days for session. My husband also didn't like seeing strangers after strangers coming into our home as I have to keep watch that nothing else go missing when they are doing housekeeping. There was no one from H company to address any issues as they only gave us a BOT line for communication. So I asked C company to stop using H company and send me a permanent temp from C company first.

But this last caregiver from C company has a weird personality which was based from her Japanese Buddhism religion known as SOKA. I felt my own boundary was violated when she tried to preach her beliefs to me. It get annoying as I didn't even preach to her on my Christian belief. I asked for her understanding that we can respect one another's beliefs yet she kept insisting that I should be OPEN and attend her SOKA activities each time she came over for the home care session, etc.

Then came that last straw when I casually mentioned the Hong Kong massive apartments Fire that killed over 150 people as I felt compassion and sorrow for the victims. Guess what she coldly said to me, "It's KARMA'." Oh my! How insensitive and heartless she is!!! Right away, I felt in my soul that this person isn't right in her spirit. Didn't another Hong Kong youtuber was jailed for his same comment on 'Karma' a week later? (see the enclosed 2nd photo) How would you feel to be around a person like that, mocking at others misfortune.

And as this elderly caregiver came over the next few more sessions, she often will speak in a loud tone with great emotional instability despite I kept reminding her to be quiet in my household as I have night shift tenants sleeping in the day, or that my husband has mental condition that he doesn't like to be triggered by noises. I do find it is hard to train someone older as she doesn't seem to follow my instructions but choose to do it her way.

Despite I told her my chest dressing cannot get wet while showering, she saw that the area around the plaster was a little dirty and she just took a hand towel and wet it to rub over the area, making the plaster wet!!! And that made me sick for 2 weeks and I wasn't able to even blog as I was out of commission... sleeping all the time taking antibiotics to fight off the infection due to her mistake! So enough was enough, I asked for a transfer since C company seems to only be able to employ older local ladies (60-ishs) for their ad hoc services. Which is not surprising given that which local youngsters would want to do this type of 'hard labour dirty' care giving work?

Most of these part timers are retirees who can't find full time employment due to their age and as SG is aging, more healthcare are looking for these part time staff to fill in the market demands for home care services. And as they are locals, they have families here and often ended up not turning up for sessions due to last minute family matters. Or they themselves have aging health issues and always on medical leave and can't turn up as well.

Honestly, care giving needs younger people as I don't feel good when these elder caregivers ended up injured (like my Malay caregiver) while they are supposed to be caring for me. And being older than me, they are not that teachable or willing to follow instructions as I realized. So I found the more professional A company which hired younger foreigners on work permits. At least I won't need to worry about not enough manpower or lack of training. Now I just have to wait for the A company to send their case manager to meet up for a discussion on what are my care needs and duration so the service can commence most likely next month.

Time to let go and Let GOD send the right caregiver/s for my home personal care service. 🙏