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 except ... 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. Jeannie Wilson died in 2004 when she suffered burns in a bath tub as a resident living in the Jubilee Nursing Home in Edmonton.
Words cannot describe such a loss.
I strongly suggest testing water temperatures for people who cannot do it for themselves is mandatory. Absolutely.
But it is fundamentally wrong for Alberta Health Services to march into private homes of mentally alert people and arbitrarily make such intrusive changes.
It begs the question: how much is Alberta Health Services is, and why are they spraying innocent people with cold water?
Words cannot describe such a loss.
I strongly suggest testing water temperatures for people who cannot do it for themselves is mandatory. Absolutely.
But it is fundamentally wrong for Alberta Health Services to march into private homes of mentally alert people and arbitrarily make such intrusive changes.
It begs the question: how much is Alberta Health Services is, and why are they spraying innocent people with cold water?
