To be, or not to be a Home Health Aid, that, that was the question.

(clients)

It wasn’t long after the final round of golf in 2002, late November, fortunately, that I began to pursue something to keep be busy during the winter. I’d seen several adds in the Sunday newspaper for various jobs, and had applied for something called “an Home Health Aid”, which sounded good to me. I thought it might be of some help to others, make a little money during the winter to pay off some bills and buy my wife a few things she’d expressed an interest in, and pass the time until we could tee it up again.

I went for an initial interview early in November and, frankly, the Human Resources person, a Cindy French, talked me out of it with her descriptions of changing shitty diapers, lifting 300 pound people, caring for folks with various, serious diseases, and she did go on and on. Judy had done this type of work ten years ago when she first left Kodak, and had much the same to say, adding, “You won’t believe the people you’ll be working with, the aides that are supposed to be helping people will, well, you see and you decide”. I knew I wanted to do something during the winter so I sent out several resumes (yea, I updated one which I told my self I wouldn’t do) and went on three or four actual interviews, all for entry level jobs (like baking bread at Montana Mills, working in a print shop moving material, and one mysterious advertising/marketing sales job that I never got a call back on). So, NOT A SINGLE FUCKING OFFER for any these entry-level jobs was made as, alas, perhaps I was overqualified, scaring them off.

I went back to Rural Metro to follow up on the Home Health Aid “opportunity”, and on Monday, December 9^th, 2002, I started my two “free” weeks of training. Free training means that you don’t get paid while your training, at least that’s what Cindy French says. The class was taught by two nurses, using a basic text book, and my classmates, there were six of us that started together that joined three others whom had completed the first week, and together the nine of us read chapters, took “quizzes”, and practiced various skills we’d need to employ once upon the job in people’s homes. It became apparent, early, that the attrition rate was high as being on time was critical, following directions, critical, being respectful (especially of the teaching nurses), critical, and having the basic abilities to read, write and do simple math. At the end of the first week our group of nine had shrunk to six, and we added, the following Monday, four more “students”, only to finish the week with four. There was me, the fifty year old white guy, Joseph, a beautiful young black man with size fourteen, triple E shoes, Cheryl, an early forties woman from Baltimore, and Jewel, a young, beautiful black girl with a diamond in her nose. The others had come and gone, violators of the aforementioned rules and regulations, and on Monday, December 16^th, 2002, Joseph, Cheryl and I went to Rochester General Hospital for out “clinical” check out. This portion of the training takes you into a hospital to work with actual patients, working with a nurse and a technician in a real life setting. My assignment was a woman named Terri B. who has cancer that had spread from her lungs to her brain, and she was pretty much out of it. I’d never seen anybody that ill before, and as I gave her a sponge bath and brushed her teeth it occurred to me, again, as if a board was hitting me on the head, how lucky I was to be so health, and everyone I know and love is so healthy and how quickly a life can just slip away, just as Terry B. was doing right in front of me. Anyways, we finished the day, took our final exams, signed a bunch of papers and received assignments, and we were Home Health Aids.

On Tuesday, December 16^th, 2002 I went on my first assignment to see Joey, a twenty-nine year old young man living with his parents, who was autistic. It was another beginning.