Green
doesn’t go very will with the color schemes in my bathroom.
But now I
have a green folder in my washroom. And what’s worse is what in it — causing
one to seriously ask if Alberta Health Services is running scared?
Perhaps
more to the point: the provincial government’s health arm, apparently, believes
all Albertans with people with disabilities do not have — and should not have —
much control in their own care.
And we’re
supposedly living in 2013 with progressive thinking?
I have
cerebral palsy and use a wheelchair. I need assistance with my morning shower,
getting onto a bath chair and adjusting the temperature of the water.
Here’s
where the green folder enters the equation … and the bathroom. Alberta Health
Services has implemented a new program: the person helping me with my shower
must check the water temperature three times.
There’s a
chart in the green folder and now must be initialed by the staff member after
checking the shower temperature.
I seem to
have lost the ability to do so myself, despite my 50 plus years of experience, and
despite AHS officials not having the class to ask me if I can do so.
But hark!
Something like that would take too much time, wouldn’t it? So AHS has decided to
deem all people with disabilities in the same boat — tubs, you see, would be
too small — and declare all of us mentally unfit to judge our own bath or
shower water.
What if I
come home next winter after being outside on a cold, stormy night and I am cold
— and want a nice hot shower to warm up? Nobody can determine but me the warmth
of the water that will warm me up me.
I am
insulted thinking that individual right now seems to be running down my shower
drain.
I resent
my own home, the very place I own with money I have worked for over 30 years,
being turned into a mini-institution. Not even a single millimeter.
Over the
decades, people with disabilities have fought blood, sweat and tears to live in
the community and take risks, rather than co-habituating in the stoic walls of
nursing homes and extended care centres.
I am
fearful this new initiative — and I’m being kind, here — might be just the
beginning of AHS taking more control. What’s next? Signs in our condo’s lobby
stating visiting hours are over at 9 p.m.?
We have
to ask ourselves why? Why is this happening now?
A good
friend made an interesting point Sunday: something probably happened with
community care that was handed over to a lawyer who let legal jargon over rule
common sense and first-hand experience. AHS had to act, do something — and
their new charting system fit the knee jerk reaction perfectly.
I am not,
by any means, dismissing the seriousness of the scalding water. In 2004, Jennie Nelson Nelson died from second degree burns when she was a resident
of the Jubilee Lodge Nursing Home in Edmonton when she was s tub.
That ‘s a
tragic loss.
I would
strongly suggest testing water for staff caring for people who cannot judge
safely judge water themselves is, indeed, a great idea. Absolutely.
But for
Alberta Health Services to arbitrarily march into my home and make such
intrusive demands is, in my books, fundamentally wrong.
And begs the
question: how much hot water is Alberta Health Services really in, and why
other innocent people are being sprayed with cold water?
