Home (a story by Petty)

Ah Petty, I can honestly say I cried as I read your story. I worked for four years as night attendant in an upscale senior's residence. I was alone with over seventy patients , three floors of them. The place was billed self care but most were unable to do so , especially those with dementia and I was run off my feet . I also had to do chef's help, food prep, clean all the down stairs including cook's kitchen and allthe stoves and burners, steam tables, etc. Plus I was reception and security alone. I worked with medic alert and life line and like you I could not go on the elevator, unlike you, not even with a patient. I would have to put them in wheelchair or whatever and run up all the stairs. there is a reason for this, if the lift stopped we would have to wait hours to have it repaired, the other clients might have a heart attack or fall down and I alone would be there to work on them until the paramedics arrived. I did work some day shift and saw cruelty and indifference by some of the staff toward the patients, like you said they died, they were replaced. But to me they were some ones mother and father, grandmother and grandfather and I fought hard for them The entire staff save two had secret meetings and tried to get me fired. But the owners instead promoted me. It was a lonely four years though. After some of the others quit they made it a point to tell me they respected me and wished they could have been the same but, their jobs depended on ...........
Your descriptions were wonderful, the atmosphere seemed right on.
Petty, you have the germ of a good writer. I would like to see you take it seriously if you are interested and write, write, write. As a free lance journalist and writer I have found that despite all the course, etc, it really the person that reads extensively in the genres of interest that eventually emerge as solid and talented writers. Got a library card?

Thanks leelee, I am glad you found it moving. Care Homes are tough places and the staff often are one of the main problems. I have no idea how it is in Canada but here the job is so far down the respect scale it doesn't even register. I'd be better off telling people I was a leper than a care worker, at least then they'd be some sympathy, we don't even get that, people seem to think we must have done something to deserve the job, as it its a punished for something. The pay is minimum wage and for most of the time I have done the job the basic qualification is still being there at the end of your first week. As the saying goes, pay peanuts get monkeys.
But when it all goes horribly wrong and inevitable abuse is discovered and society feigns outrage I have no time for it, society couldn't give a s**t 99% of the time, out of sight out of mind, society just gets outraged when it has to confront how it is treating the eldery and those who have to care for them, but it never address the problem, just finds new ways to put it back out of sight and out of mind.

You write as well as anybody I know, Petty, never mind having a germ. Your talent is clearly far more evolved than the germ state. As to the treatment of the problem, money makes the world go round, and would I be prepared to double my taxes to solve all social problems, and could even a wealthy society afford to solve them all? It's a hideous equation, I know. We are all rats in the rat race.

Yes but society makes decisions about what it spends money on. It chooses for example in the UK to put vast sums into a nuclear detterent. Not wishing to argue the merits of that here just to point out that it is a choice, we choose to do that rather than say spend the same on looking after vulnerable elderly. We choose weaponry over our own parents and grand parents. There is something very wrong with our species you know!

We are just part of the evolutionary pool. Ethics are part of our evolutionary process. As is politics. A cheetah would nurture it's daughter, then moveit on, and chase it off or even kill it if it came back into her territory, but a lioness wouldn't . Something wrong with cheetahs? You're right, we make choices. If you don't have bombs, then the Ruskies will take over. Will they take better care of your elderly? Individuals, like your Caregiver, are the best hope as things currently go for elderly individuals. And members of small Communities helping each other. I remember your tenements being ripped down and the loss of community. Having old people's homes in the first place is a failure of community. Relying on the taxpayer and the taxpayer's representative (government) to look after someone else's aging Mum or Dad seems a poor way of dealing with it. My Mother looked after her Mother at home. Nowadays, we have joint wage earners (because we want things more than the basic I'd argue), and no time for parent care, so we put our elderly in homes, and expect other taxpayers to pay for the service. I speak in generalities, of course, but in earlier times family, or their local community (tribe) were expected to look after their own. Now we put Mum and Dad in homes and pay strangers (however good and dutiful) to care for them. Ethically speaking, our species is wrong headed nowadays - and too selfish and greedy. Mind you, our now elderly parent's started it, so maybe being thrown into an under resourced home is their just desert?

Evolution is over rated.Trust in Illuvatar, Mr Tyrant, that's what I say. Pray for an answer!

odo banks wrote:Evolution is over rated.Trust in Illuvatar, Mr Tyrant, that's what I say. Pray for an answer!

Agreed. I know I am praying for an answer to this fatiguing Odo Orwell thing. NexT I shall find out Petty is Pretty and they are both Odo Orwell and are applauding their, his own work.

Just to say I made a slight addition to the last part. Just a few lines following the the body getting soapy. Jut thought I'd mention it.

leelee the very notion that the Tyrants and the Banks could possibly be one in the same is, well I am lost for words that's how bad it is. And for once I think the Banks and the Tyrantts might have found something to agree upon- the unwelcomness of such a suggestion! I am too shocked. I going to go up my tree, sit in my barrel and have a good fume (with a buckie or two just to help it along you understand).

additional- I've decided to title this 'Home'. (Thanks to Orwell for that).

I'll edit the title for you, though I think that "Home" is too short for the forum software, so I'll leave in your name.

Thats cool Eldo.

As I have done a second draft of what was already written i have removed the previous versions on here and put the entire redo up on the first page.

A very small thought, Petty. Why not get rid of the numerals (1 + 2) and treat each "chapter" as a short story. So page one will just have OLLY on it. Somehow that would seem more neat and tidy to me. It would also seem to me that OLLY and JOHN STIBBONS would have their own tales and not seem just to be there as one in a sequence of stories about people in a Home, therefore seeming to individualise them the tiniest tad more. Not sure I'm explaining myself here very well - I'm expressing a feeling more than giving a rational analysis I know, but there you ago. A "Contents" page could have each "story" numbered, though, to assist folk in finding a particular "story" they might decide to read again at any time. This would not interfere with your stories having a 'novelistic' aspect, if that is the affect you're looking for. (I have down loaded your edited version and will read again soon).

The numbering here is purely for neatness on the forum. Poor old Stibbons is actualy 4 but 2 and 3 are a work in progress.
In terms of structure it is individual tales focusing on individual residents (although others appear in varies stories as do staff) and they are linked by an overall story bits of which are entwined in each seperate story.
The closest books I know to this sort of structure are the James Herriot vet books, individual tales that are episodic but also fit a larger overall story.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:The numbering here is purely for neatness on the forum. Poor old Stibbons is actualy 4 but 2 and 3 are a work in progress.
In terms of structure it is individual tales focusing on individual residents (although others appear in varies stories as do staff) and they are linked by an overall story bits of which are entwined in each seperate story.
The closest books I know to this sort of structure are the James Herriot vet books, individual tales that are episodic but also fit a larger overall story.

What if 4 and 2 were actually "finished" but just shorter chapters? Is that a possibility? (Chapter 1 seems finished. Have you decided it is btw? It does seem so...)

1- Olly- thats was originally called Morning Shift and it was supposed to cover the entire morning with Olly not just be the opening incident, and in fact I wrote a good deal more after that. But then I decided it might be better to focus each bit on an individual. This of course meant dumping all the stuff I'd written immediately following the Olly incident. And some of it, particularly staff relations and introducing the mangement, the feud with the cleaning staff, I need to put somewhere. My dilemna now is where?
There should be another chapter dropping by within the next day or two if I can work this out. But between writing it, a certain pop video, organising the picnic, creating an animation, reading 2 particular books, I barely have time for the buckie, so that time frame may turn out to be optimistic.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:1- Olly- thats was originally called Morning Shift and it was supposed to cover the entire morning with Olly not just be the opening incident, and in fact I wrote a good deal more after that. But then I decided it might be better to focus each bit on an individual. This of course meant dumping all the stuff I'd written immediately following the Olly incident. And some of it, particularly staff relations and introducing the mangement, the feud with the cleaning staff, I need to put somewhere. My dilemna now is where?
There should be another chapter dropping by within the next day or two if I can work this out. But between writing it, a certain pop video, organising the picnic, creating an animation, reading 2 particular books, I barely have time for the buckie, so that time frame may turn out to be optimistic.

You must be discerning. My unbiased and purely rational advice would be: Finish the video, then your next instalment of "Home", and damn all the rest to Hell! (That is, until the truly important things are done. ).


Oh, you should read two particular books - they don't read themselves...

"damn all the rest to Hell!"

If I do that no picnic. A music video is not all that's provided you know (it's just the centre piece), there's the fireworks to organise (already going eyebrowless here- things I do), and a flyover through Forumshire past the Buckie Breweing Wizards in their wood, onto Needlehole, up to the Fortrreess of Lore and on, on to the setting sun, the golden sea and Valinor. And I haven't even set the main stage up yet, or sent out the official invites I'm doing this year (I'm thinking of for once abusing the fact I have a lot of e-mails on my skydrive list to send everyone I can a lovely invite with gold edging, even such as a Mr Baggins would approve of -maybe even an Odo Banks)- when did I say the picninc was, oh yes the 28th right after Docotr Who finishes.....thats 16 days away. 16! Excuse me, I have some work to do...

Pettytyrant101 wrote:"damn all the rest to Hell!"

If I do that no picnic. A music video is not all that's provided you know (it's just the centre piece), there's the fireworks to organise (already going eyebrowless here- things I do), and a flyover through Forumshire past the Buckie Breweing Wizards in their wood, onto Needlehole, up to the Fortrreess of Lore and on, on to the setting sun, the golden sea and Valinor. And I haven't even set the main stage up yet, or sent out the official invites I'm doing this year (I'm thinking of for once abusing the fact I have a lot of e-mails on my skydrive list to send everyone I can a lovely invite with gold edging, even such as a Mr Baggins would approve of -maybe even an Odo Banks)- when did I say the picninc was, oh yes the 28th right after Docotr Who finishes.....thats 16 days away. 16! Excuse me, I have some work to do...

So much work and too few hands!

I've been meaning to check your second installment since it went up on here, but not got round to it.

I love reading your chapters, everyting flows so naturally that I quickly become immersed in the tale. Your compassion seem to shine through and I admire and empathise with the honesty of the thought processes and emotions we go through in dificult situations. The first half of the John Stibbons piece reduced me to tears, I felt I could be there. The contrast with the aftermath again felt very true to life. I hope you'll post more as you go.

In addition I would like to echo some of whats been said in terms of thanks/ admiration for what you do. As you say people would rather forget and ignore the realities of age and death, to the detriment of us all i think!

Thanks for your kind words Kafria. Working in a home can feel quite isolating, like you are in a little bubble kept to the side where society doesn't want to look, so your words mean a lot to me.
Hopefully, if things are quiet tonight I will get some more writing done for posting. And I have your story to take me through the night too which I am looking forward too.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Hopefully, if things are quiet tonight I will get some more writing done for posting.

Yeah, right. Well, hurry up - but don't feel presured though!

And while you're at it, where's my video? - but don't feel pressured though.

And what's your character doing in the Role Play? - but you mustn't feel pressured!

Kafria wrote:I love reading your chapters, everyting flows so naturally that I quickly become immersed in the tale!

Ditto... Top shelf.

Yeah, right. Well, hurry up - but don't feel presured though!

And while you're at it, where's my video? - but don't feel pressured though.

And what's your character doing in the Role Play? - but you mustn't feel pressured! -Orwell

There's a moral somewhere about biting and chewing- wish I could remember it.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:There's a moral somewhere about biting and chewing- wish I could remember it.

Is that: "Bite off more than you can chew and chew like mad"?

Thats the very bugger! Chewing like crazy here!