Jerseygirl
08-09-2002, 05:56 PM
I generally deal with loss very well, I worked with HIV babies for years and had to learn. Now I supervise a program for 41 adults with multiple handicaps. Today one of my clients died. We have been together nearly 10 years, she was 31,non verbal and confined to a wheelchair and functioned on the level of a 5 month old child. She is the 3rd that I have lost this year, but she was always one of my favorites. She died of kidney failure and I really feel like this could have been avoided. Her family was not overly involved, she lived in a group home (which my agency also runs) and has been in and out of the hospital for the past 6 months with bronchial issues. Four weeks ago I got into a very loud and mean arguement (I get kinda mean when I don't think my "kids" are getting what they should) with the house manager and RN because I felt they were not advocating strongly enough for her, you could tell she wasn't herself and the doctors were not aggressively searching for a reason. I provided all of the documentation on all the problems I was seeing and my nurse were seeing, but that is where my jurisdiction ends. I hold my agency and the medicaid doctors 100 % responsible for this. I have already dealt with this at the state level, but because she was taken to all of the scheduled dr appts they did what they were responsible for--the problem is they went on the opinions of a dr who didn't know her, did not exhaust all options for testing because no one pushed him to. Now I have to look at these people on an almost daily basis--all I can do is hope that when they are no longer able to care for themselves that they are treated with the same lack of interest that they treated my princess. Thanks for listening ladies.