The Game Plan.........

As with any game plan, it always changes. I had "going home in my head". I had been given a day to work toward going home, then it was decided that I should stay another week. I was absolutely gutted at the time, and spent a lot of time crying by myself at night when everyone had gone home.

In hindsight, it ended up being a really focused week, I got on top of all the medication I was on, and was able to identify the meds by sight and knew what I was taking them for. I learnt to use a gutter frame which soon turned into a scooter. I learnt how to make tea and toast, and could peel a potato with one hand. Go on ask me how?

The surgeries that could be done had been done. I was more or less sitting around a hospital room waiting. The surgeons had had several consultations and had also traveled to London and Switzerland attending medical conferences seeking advise from other surgeons around the world, but still no clear answer as to where we were going.

Home day came, with a ride in an Ambulance. The ambo was a patient transfer ambo, and on the journey home, we had to pick up someone and drop them to Hutt Hospital. As this person was being lifted in to the ambulance, I could see he was a man, possibly mid 50's, I smiled and said hello to him as he was being helped by the paramedics, but my heart quickly sank and I'm sure my face turned bright red, as I watched him being strapped into the ambulance in his wheelchair, I tried not to stare, as a smack of reality hit me. This man was a new amputee, both legs gone, one mid thigh, the other just below the knee. I'm a cocky smart arse at the best of times, and think my sense of humour will get me out of most things, but none of that it going to put my leg back together, and here was a man in front of me traveling down a path where I could be heading myself.

It was more nerve-racking to be home than I thought. How do I get up the steps to the door of my house without any help, there is nothing to hold onto or to pull myself up on, how is my wheelchair going to fit in my house? the hallways are much narrower than the hospital , how do I get over the step into the shower? they are wet floors in the hospital, how to I sit on the loo as it is much lower than the ones in hospital, my house is a two story house, with my two younger children's room's upstairs, how will I get up to them to tuck them into bed and kiss them goodnight each night. Another dose of reality, and my house soon looking like an ACC equipment storage facility, with a stair handrail installed, a wheelchair, a gutter frame, a shower stool, a toilet stools...... Whoo hoo!! I've entered an old age faciity.

And this was just the start of things to come. I was supported extremely well by ACC, I would have to say I have been one of the very lucky ones with ACC. They gave me everything they could, and nothing was a problem. I was able to have the use of taxi's to pick me up and take me to my medical and physio appointments, I had occupational therapists come to the house and assess what I needed to be able to get around , they were in fits of laughter when I simply slid off the couch to the floor and shuffled along on my butt telling them I didn't need their fancy equipment cluttering my house.

I was entitled to home help, and I can tell you, she helped herself to my home!!

I would order my groceries online, lucky countdown had recently started up home deliveries, which was extremely helpful. My delivery guy was awesome too, he would bring my shopping into the house and put most of it away for me.

I would oder food that the kids could easily prepare themselves, or dinners that I could talk them through.

The kids were going back and forth between my house and their fathers house, and you know what kids are like, they leave things behind all the time right, but their comments of

"It's not here Mum" were becoming more and more frequent and I was blaming 'You've probably left it as Dads" more and more. But it was when blocks of cheese and blocks of butter were 'not there", or the chicken in the freezer was "I can't see it Mum" and use the big pot in the second draw "its not there Mum" I was thinking what the hell?

So when I ordered my groceries again, I KNOWINGLY selected the same items for delivery, and the same conversations were happening of "its not here Mum" "I can't find it Mum",

I called the Countdown delivery man and asked him if he could print off my order and come back around to show me, and sure enough in black and white, the items were selected, picked and delivered, but not in my house. I felt like I was going bloody mad. It wasn't really until I asked my neighbour to come over and help me change the linen on my bed that I really thought what is happening here?? All of my bed linen had gone except what was on my bed, and because the linen cupboard was upstairs and I couldn't get upstairs to see, I wasn't going to notice in any great hurry as the home help was basically washing and putting back on the linen from my bed. I had a Super King Bed also, so not just any old linen.

I was utterly floored, she was such a nice lady, surely she wouldn't!! I called the company she was contracted to, and I can tell you I was shitting myself. I didn't know what this woman could be capable of, and here I was about to make a complaint about her. My vulnerability went through the roof. My oldest son was not living at home, my middle son was living at his fathers, and my daughter wanted to do week about with her father, so I was mostly home alone. AND the care giver knew how to get in and out of my house and knew my daily routine.

I was able to have her managed out of the role, using ACC not sure they would renew my home help entitlement, so she was soon to be leaving. But the list of "things not there" grew and grew, kids shoes, clothing, an iPod, jackets, food, pots, linen, jewellery, even the lawnmower! and these are the items I KNEW of! And you know what worse? even on the last day she worked, when she left, I went to use my hair straighteners, which weren't there, I blamed my daughter, I though she had taken them upstairs to use them and not brought them back down. When daughter got home from school and I asked her, she said Mum I haven't used them, the penny dropped.

I went through the process to make a formal complaint about the home help career, she was questioned, and was highly offended that I wood think such a thing of her, but because I dad no proof, it was my word over hers, nothing ever came of it. Oddly enough, once the caregiver left, things stopped going missing.

Amazing how people will take advantage!