So, over the next couple of days I will be tweeting some of my nursing home experiences & thoughts. A heads up because they need all the trigger warnings - there will be mention of sexual assault, rape, abuse of disabled people, symptoms of ageing, excrements, death & more.
I will keep them all in this thread, and hashtag with #careDays - so if the above sounds too heavy to have stuff just pop up in your timeline I suggest you mute me for the next month, this thread, or the hashtag.
I'll start with a conversation that I kept having with different people, friends and strangers alike. It goes like this:

me: *mentions working in a nursing home
other person: "Oh wow, I could never do your job!"

They always mean well, but they are also almost always lying.
They mean well because they think they are telling me how they appreciate how hard my job is, and convey their respect for my work. What I am hearing though is

"Wow I'm so glad I don't have to do your job!"
And indeed at some point I started extending the conversation like this:

other person: "...I could never do your job!"
me: "Yes you could if you had to."

The response to that was unfailingly: "Well, yeah, probably."

QED
So this "I could never do your job!" faux praise grated me more than anything. I was not doing that job because I was somehow psychologically, physically, morally, emotionally better suited to it than my more privileged conversation partners. I just had to.

#caredays
#caredays

There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding about what it is that makes this work hard. People think that it is hard because you get confronted, and have to deal with, old age, death, and other people's excrements.

These are not the things that were hard for me.
#caredays

These are necessary parts of the work, and a work that is more worth doing than any paid job I'd ever had before.

The work itself is not the problem, the working conditions are. I will get into that in a lot more detail obv, but not today.
Today I just want to point out that this misunderstanding has consequences, one of them being that people assume that the work itself is intrinsically "hard", and that there is nothing that can really be done about it.

This is utter and complete bs.

#caredays
So what about the working conditions makes it hard?

Many of those things are shared with other low paid shift work, like getting yelled at on a daily basis & not being able to have any kind of daily or weekly routine because the shifts shift around all the time

#caredays
But the worst thing about it for me was being caught in never changing double binds where whatever of the available choices I made the result would guarantee that I would get yelled at as well as endanger the residents I was responsible for.

#caredays
The first part might just be my sheltered upbringing. I'm not used to people yelling at each other, and experiencing it habitually stresses me the fuck out. Like to the point of tears/sleep 'disorder' on nights before work days.

#caredays
Nor do I like yelling at others even if that would have been an option, because yelling at each other was a common way to relieve stress in an environment where everybody is overworked and underpaid all the fucking time.

#caredays
Like yes, I can and do yell about obvious assholery, like street harassment or the like, but when I know the other person is just as stressed as me and basically right because things really should not be the way they are? Not so much.

#caredays
But the double binds are much much worse. Here is a classic: I am in an area with 6-10 heavily demented people. In theory I should never be on this post alone, in practice I often am.

#caredays
I am responsible for all of them to eat and drink and get to the toilet & their nappies changed. Some of them can still eat and drink alone, none of them can go to the toilet alone, and most of them need the help of 2 carers to do so safely.

#caredays
I am also not allowed to leave the room because I need to make sure nobody tries to get up and falls in the process (none of those residents can walk alone anymore, but not all of them are aware of this). Falling at this stage can be deadly.

#caredays
So, when it is time for the toilet runs I can either wait for help to come, which often does not. In that case my people will sit in their shit for hours, I will get yelled at for not taking them to the toilet, and this whole sitting in shit thing? Not healthy.

#caredays
Or I can try to get them to the toilets myself, alone, in which case I endanger the people I can't watch while I'm out of the room, as well as myself and the people I'm taking to the toilet, because while this often works just fine people are heavy and I am short,

#caredays
and one wrong move of them or me can bring both of us tumbling to the floor. remember, "tumbling to the floor" can well be deadly. Mind, many of "my" people do not realize that going to the toilet is necessary, so they might struggle against me lifting them etc.

#caredays
Doing this kind of heavy lifting is basically guaranteed to break my back sooner or later, and often hurts, but there is a chance I might not get yelled at if I do this. There is also a chance I _do_ get yelled at depending on who sees me doing it.

#caredays
Esp. visiting family member who are aware that this way of working is unsafe and we're not supposed to do it, like, ever. In theory there should be 3 of us: 1 watching the room while 2 do the toilet runs together, safely

#caredays
In practice it is often just me, choosing between different kinds of risks, none of which are acceptable.

And if you're complaining about it, or the back pain, *you* are blamed for not asking for help, for unsafe working practices etc.

#caredays
Because management lives or at least talks exclusively in a world in which no carer ever has to do an unsafe thing alone, or lift in an unhealthy way, because "you can always ask for somebody to help you."

#caredays
Yeah, I tried. But speaking up only earns you a shrug from the nurse in charge because they can't work magic either.

I mean sure I can ask all those colleagues that ARE NOT HERE because WE'RE FUCKING UNDERSTAFFED YOU GASLIGHTING MORONS.

#caredays
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