Eight: The Shift

Naomi, 58

I’ve worked in aged care for 11 and a half years.

I started working in my first job when I was 15. I worked in admin in a timber mill and I was there for 26 years. Then my husband got a transfer, so we came here. I did a little bit of admin work then I went grape packing for probably about 11 weeks. Then I tried a little bit of motel cleaning for 12 months and that was enough.

I worked in a little cafe that one of my friends opened. Unfortunately, she passed away with cancer, so I put in for the admin position here but I didn’t get it. They saw I had done a little bit of cleaning, so they offered me the position with hospitality. I took it and I’m still here.

I really love the residents. I like working with the elderly as it’s very rewarding. They appreciate everything that you do. So that’s the biggest part of it, I suppose.

You develop relationships with a lot of them. I like gardening, which a lot of them used to. I like to crochet, which a lot of them do. Just things like that, that we have in common. Some like fishing, or used to like fishing, so you develop, I suppose, interests like that.

I was a little bit worried when I came here first with death and finding someone. I didn’t find people, but a couple passed away when I first came here and a couple of us went in and said goodbye and things like that, which really helped me deal with death. I wasn’t very good. I didn’t know how I’d react when my mum and dad passed away. My mum’s still alive, but my dad died suddenly, 10 years ago, and I think it really helped me cope with his passing.

I’m very close to my mum and dad. I was actually working here when he had a heart attack. I think that aspect of it really helped me cope with that.

I get here at 6:30 in the morning and then I start setting up for breakfast for 21 people. By about 7:15, they all start coming in, and you just serve them their breakfast. Some have trays, so you set all the trays up.

The carers usually come up and deliver the trays. I just serve all the other residents. When that’s over, I clean up from breakfast, go and have a break, come back, do a tea run.

That’s to each room. Sometimes they’re in the lounge so you just serve them there if they’re sitting and watching TV or something. Otherwise, some of the others are in their rooms. So you just take the little trolley around and, during breakfast, you make them sandwiches and cake and stuff like that. Take them morning tea. Then I come back into my little kitchen and just finish cleaning up.

I go for my lunch break from 11:00 to 11:30 then I go back to the kitchen, just put the water jugs and things like that out. Go to the main kitchen, pick up the bain-marie, come back, start serving lunch from 12:00. They’re usually all in by then. With breakfast, they come and go but with lunch they’re all there together, which makes it a little bit easier. Then just serve lunch, clean up and at 1:30, I knock off.

I do that Monday to Friday, one week, and then Monday to Friday the second week, but I have Thursday off. So I do nine days a fortnight.

Lately, because we’ve been short on staff, I’ve been coming back doing some double shifts and extra days. But, I’m not the only one. Some of the other girls have as well.

I’m dealing with 21 people, because that’s my permanent shift. I do fill-in sometimes in the main kitchen, or in here, in the other little kitchens, if the girls aren’t here. But, mainly, that is my shift.

I have done meal prep as well. Where I am, I actually make sandwiches and stuff like that for morning tea, but I have worked in the main kitchen and done food prep.

It can be quite complex to make sure everyone gets what they like and want. We have a respite that comes in every fortnight, so I usually go and sit down with them and just ask them exactly what they want for breakfast the next morning, so that I know. You’ve basically got to know when people come in, you get a dietary sheet.

We usually go through that and your basic things are what their fluids are, if they’re thickened or not, and their texture, if they’re normal or whether they have got special needs. If they have allergies. Because some people have allergies to seafood and things like that.

There are a lot more gluten-free people and things like that. People change.

We’ve got team leaders in different sections, which is really good. Our team leader tries to keep us two on permanent shifts so that we know our residents, and you communicate with your team leader. So, for instance, I’m not a carer, but if I see someone that is having difficulty eating two or three days in a row or isn’t eating as much, just their behaviour change, I always report it to the care staff.

My team leader will then come in and say, “What do you think?”

Texture-wise, sometimes they might get sick. So they’ll put them on, say, a puree diet, [should they have] something to do with their mouth. And then of course, they get a little, sometimes, they get a little bit better. So they might not like pureed food anymore. They might like more of a texture in their food. So we sort of look at it like that. And if we think that, yes, they should go back on, say, mince moist, which is more sort of cut up and then we take it to the RNs. And then sometimes, we’ve actually got that person put back on a different texture and they eat more.

[How do you deal with a loss of appetite, where people might not be interested in eating?]

Sometimes, it’s just a case of, they might need, say, a white sauce on their food or a bit more gravy. We try and look at what they do like, and if they have still got their mind, I’ve sat down with them or the chef has sat down with them and said, “You tell me what you’d like.” And then, I’ll take that to the chef, and between him and my team leader, they’ll try and work out special things for that person.

I’ve got a lady here who’s a vegetarian so he prepares special vegetarian meals sometimes. Or if it’s a vegetable dish that day, she’ll have that. One lady just likes sandwiches, but then sometimes, like today, I asked, “Would you like a bit of this?” And today, she did have a little meal.

And we’ve got smoothies which we can give them. I think if hospitality and the care staff work as a team, that’s so important, because sometimes, we observe more of those things than the care staff because they’re showering and doing things like that. But if we report to each other and work as a team, we can solve the problem for the resident.

[You have to stimulate people emotionally in some way, and variety is key.]

And colours. We’ve got a lady up there who can’t see very well. So we give her a red plate with a bracket on it. So that when she started eating her food, it doesn’t fall off the plate, but also, she can see it better. Yeah, so they actually brought that in a few years ago with the people in high care. One day, someone said, “Oh, maybe we should try that.” So we did and she finds it a lot easier.

I used to bring in the little fresh flowers, but we had so many hassles. They like flowers on the table. It takes them back to when, I think, they used to set their table and things like that. We used to have tablecloths, but they’ve gone off tablecloths, but a lot of them used to really like tablecloths as well. I think they’ve become a little bit expensive.

[Do the residents have preferences where they sit and, if someone’s in their seat, do they get quite stressed?]

They do, sometimes. At breakfast it makes it a little bit easier for us because sometimes we put their cereals and that out on the table, or they have different settings. Some might just have two spoons, some might have knife, fork, and spoon, some have like a beaker. Because we’re sort of a bit pressed for time, as in our shifts used to be longer, and now they’ve been cut back, we have to try and make it as pleasant as we can.

A lot of them like to sit with their friends. Some don’t like to sit with others because they make too much noise or things like that.

If they want to shift, they can always shift, but most of them, I ask them, if I can see a bit of a hassle. We did have a little bit of a problem there not long ago. One lady’s very noisy and she’s a little bit deaf. She talks very loud and there’s another lady there that just hated it. She was getting really aggro with it.

I just went and spoke to them both and said, “We’ve got this little problem and we’ve got to sort it out.” We solved the problem.

I think it’s getting to where we’re probably having more coming in that do need to be helped with feeds, because sometimes they get the girls who might be on light duties or lifestyle, because there’s not enough staff to sit down with them all the time. It is getting a little bit more high care in the low care, I suppose.

We try and sit them there where we can see them too, because sometimes they might choke or something like that.

[How have you been dealing with losing people?]

Not as hard as I thought it was going to be. I suppose you form a bond. Sometimes, before they go, they can be very sick.

They talk about death and that too. They might lose their partner and then they say, “We just would love to go and join him or her.” If they’re really sick, they just say, “Oh no, I wish we could just go.” Or just old age. Sometimes they say, “We’ve just had enough. We want to go.” You’re talking about death from lots of different angles, I suppose.

There’s been a couple that I’ve had a bit of a cry over, yeah. Probably about half a dozen, I’ve gone to their funeral, because the families have actually come and asked. It’s not only the patients that you form a bit of a bond with. It’s the families as well. They come up and say, “Thank you” at Christmas. Sometimes they bring us in chocolates and things like that. And sometimes you had a family who said, “Look, we would like you to come to the funeral.”

I suppose you do have – you’re not supposed to – but you do have your favourites because they might have the same interests as you.

There’s a lady here that… She’s an ex-police officer, high up in the police force. She never married, and she was just such a beautiful lady. She was so out there. At the end, she got quite sick and probably a little bit demented but she still loved the garden. She still loved her fishing, and all the things I probably loved, I suppose. We had a lot of interesting… We used to talk about that, and sometimes I’d bring my tablet in and show them my garden and… She was one that really touched me when she passed away.

We have had a couple of ladies here that have been very much loners. I actually suffer from anxiety … not as much as I used to. I’ve learnt to deal with it.

We had a lady here that… She wasn’t actually that old and she suffered from it quite bad. One day I just said, “Look, I know how you feel. I had a bout of depression in my early days when I lost a very good friend. I do have anxiety now and again. You know, I learned to cope with it more than I used to. I talk to myself and go, ‘Look, just go away today. I don’t want to know about you.’”

“You’ve really got to deal with it. It will never go away.”

We talked a little bit and then I think she trusted me more. Sometimes she’d say, “I’m having one of those days today. You know what it’s like?”

“Yeah, I do. Would you like a cup of tea or something?”

“Yeah, I’d love one.” Just little things like that, I suppose, that can help them.

[Empathy’s a really powerful tool. I quite often think that there will be an increasing problem, with a lot of people, that they are literally alone at the end of their lives. Childless people in particular.]

I’m a little bit worried about that too. I’m an only child, and we couldn’t have children, and we are worried about that sometimes. I suppose I’d worry more if I got to the end of my life and I knew that I was going to get sick.

These days you just don’t know, because there are people in here that are basically the same age as me and they can have a stroke tomorrow, or dementia or something. That frightens me, I suppose.

Dementia can happen overnight with some people and I suppose that frightens me a little bit … I suppose you won’t know. [laughs]

Dad and I were very, very close.

He was Italian and he loved his gardening and the day before he had just weeded all his garlic. He was so happy with that. He was 84 but he was very good for his age.

A lot of things happened on that day that I suppose I was grateful for. Mum and dad used to come in here once a week. So it could have happened while he was driving and I could have lost both of them. He could have died because he used to walk the dog every morning. So he could have fallen down up the road, whereas he just died, basically in mum’s arms.

Yeah, so it was a terrible day. But when I look back, it was how dad would’ve wanted to go. I suppose there are always negatives, but you’ve always got to try and look at the positive.

I know that he would never, ever have wanted to come in here. It looked like he’d had a heart attack and probably a stroke.

That used to always worry me with dad. Dad was a smoker, even though mum used to cut him down. He used to smoke seven a day but I was always scared he’d get cancer and get really sick. So, as I said, he went quick …

He was a very warm man, very happy man. He loved life, basically. He loved my mum very much. He loved the friends that he had. When he came out here from Italy, he came out on the ship in the fifties and basically came down here. He could speak four words of English and he put himself through English school, to learn how to speak English.

In those days, you didn’t get any handouts and he ended up in the timber mill, being the foreman of the timber mill. He used to design all the cutters to make flooring … He basically taught himself all that.

I was very proud of my dad. He used to love fishing. He used to love going cobbler fishing and he used to kill his own sheep and things like that. We used to have lamb chops.

We went back to Italy twice, because all dad’s family is over there. He was the only one that ever came out … I used to think he was very brave to do that.

He met mum in Nannup at a dance. Mum’s Australian. She’s 84 and lives on two acres of property. Someone leaves their sheep in the back part and she gets people in now to do a bit of gardening. She didn’t want to [get people in] when dad first passed but dad used to do all that.

Mum is pretty fit for her age but she did have a few little health problems. In the end I had to say, “Mum, the government give you these people to come and…”

Now she has a little housekeeper that comes in once a week and she employs a gardener, but the government does give them one, once a month or something. Now she says, “Well, if I don’t use them, well, they won’t be there.” So she has looked at it that way.

She was scared to lose her independence until I said to mum, “Well, you’re not losing it.” I said, “You’re keeping your independence because the more help you get the more things…” Because she likes Gentle Gym and she does markets and things like that.

My dad gave me my love of gardening, growing veggies and things like that. Dad and I used to garden together. I could just be out there all day. I just love it. When he used to go cobbler fishing, he used to take us, to do that.

He used to take me trout fishing, for rainbow trout, years ago when I was probably only about this high. I’ve actually got a photo of dad and I and the fish is just about bigger than me. He used to take us down there and he’d always teach us the tricks, like throw some mud in and that’d make the cobbler come.

He always used to fix things. If anything broke dad would say, “Oh no, I won’t throw it away. I’ll fix it.” And I suppose I try and invent things, I find I do in the garden too.

Mum and dad have both always taught me to respect people, treat people the way I would want to be treated. I suppose that’s a quality that I find really good in myself.

That’s just the way I was brought up.

Dad died 10 years ago. I planned dad’s funeral … I did the whole thing.

Mum was a little bit of a wreck, but I wanted dad to have a funeral that was all about him. So I made sure – because dad had a burial – that he had the clothes on that he wore in the garden and a few things that he loved. You know, mum and dad had a dog, so we put a photo of his dog in.

When we put the flowers on top of the casket, I got them to put all vegetables in them, like capsicums and things like that, all things he loved to grow. He loved to grow orchids. So we put some orchids in there.

He used to have this old gate and he always used to keep patching it. It was a big gate out the back and you used to have to like lift it up. We used to call it the ‘gate from hell.’ Dad used to always patch it up and then you’d always lift it and get your fingers squashed or something.

I tried to make it dad’s day so we had some Italian music and things like that.

Dad was the second youngest of eight, so some of them have passed anyway. His mum and dad weren’t alive. I got to meet my Nonna, but not my Nonno, because he passed when he was 50 something. My Nonna lived to 94, so we went back twice and I met her and dad’s family.

None of the family came out for his funeral. The only one that came out was one of his nephews once, with one of his mates, which was very special. Dad’s sisters were frightened. They were older, and they were frightened that they would die out here.

Two of them had lost their husbands in the war. It was a shame for dad, I think, mainly, that none of them really came out.

I don’t go out as much as I’d like to. I try and go out at least a dozen times a year, sometimes more. I always go up there and visit his grave.

My mum and dad had me and then they lost five children. As in, one went to term, mum couldn’t carry the others. These days, they probably could have done something for her …

One, my sister, went to term and died about three days later. She was still born. She was buried in the local hospital, because you always used to come here to have the babies because there was no real hospital in Nannup. I had some money given to me by my grandfather when he retired, so I had her exhumed and she’s now out in the Nannup cemetery now. So she’s right next to dad.

It’s really nice to sort of have her there.

I can speak a little bit of Italian. Dad never used to speak it, because mum didn’t speak Italian. When dad’s friends used to come, he used to feel it was rude to speak in front of mum, or some of the other wives. Dad would always go outside or something.

We never really had the language in the house. Later on, I got dad to teach me a few words, but when we went to Italy, some of my cousins could speak English because they had that at school. I did learn a little bit in the six weeks that we were over there, but then I took lessons here, so I can speak a little bit more Italian now.

I loved it in Italy. I actually thought about shifting over once.

When I was younger, a lot younger, I had a bad relationship with a man. We were together for five years and it got really bad. I was very young. I was only in my late teens, early twenties. When that broke up, I really thought, “I don’t know. I just want to go back to Italy. I just want to go over there for a while.”

My husband came along and that didn’t happen. It’s so loving and beautiful over there. I just loved the time I spent with that side of my family. I kept thinking about it all the time.

For a while I found his death quite difficult. Because I wasn’t there, because I was here serving breakfast and I got a phone call from my cousin to say, “Daddy collapsed.” I didn’t know at that stage if he had died, so I went out and one of my friends that works here, she said, “Do you want me to take you?”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

I got halfway home and I rang again and they said that dad had passed and I just felt numb. So my husband and I went out to Nannup and … mum was still in shock, I think.

It took me a good probably three years to accept that I wasn’t there to say goodbye. The Nannup hospital were beautiful, they kept dad nice and warm and everything until I got there.

That was a big thing, I wasn’t there to say, “Dad, I love you and goodbye.” Mum and I talk a lot, that’s another thing I’ve been brought up with. We’re there to talk to each other and help each other.

My husband’s very different. He wasn’t brought up to talk, so I think I drive him mad.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

Mum and I talked a lot about it and the more we talked about mum being there with him, I suppose, where if he had passed away up the road walking the dog and we wouldn’t have known whether he was in pain or not. I think mum and I helped each other that way by coping with it.

It has probably taken me a good six or seven years to get over that hurdle, but I know now that he went the best way.

When I do look at some people in here and some of his mates and friends, male friends, that have come in have had strokes or have got dementia.

I see them, these big, strong men – like my dad was – and now they’re these little, feeble men or they’ve got bad cancer.

One of his best Italian mates stayed with our family when he’d come out from Italy, he was a mechanic and he’d retired years and years before.

He was down working in his shed and something sparked off some fuel. He got burnt and he actually walked from the shed back up to the house. They took him to hospital and he took probably about five days to die. Dad couldn’t go and see him.

“I want to remember him how he was.”

The more I thought of things like that that had happened, because I said to mum, “If that ever happened to dad, I don’t think I could’ve coped with that. I think I would have a bit of a breakdown.”

When I think the peaceful way that dad went, it helps me cope a lot. But I miss him very much, very much.

I think I am a lot like dad. I don’t know, mum reckons I am. So I really liked dad. Dad had this funny thing, we often joke about it, that if we lost something like keys or something, we’d go, “Dad, I’ve lost the keys.”

He’d go, “Okay, think about it. Think where you were.” And the next minute they’d pop up or we think, “Oh, that’s where they are.” It’s funny, but now, and mum and I both have this feeling because we both believe in people’s spirits. I believe in that. When dad went, I could still feel him, I could still feel him close. If I lose something now I go, “Dad, I’ve lost my keys.” And do you know, they just turn up somewhere. [laughs] And mum reckons she’s the same.

I still believe that dad’s close to me and looks over me.

He was a good spaghetti maker. He taught me how to make spaghetti and it took a long time. He used to make it in his certain way, spaghetti bolognese. And dad said to me, “There’s no recipes, you’ve got to watch me.” And it took me probably about six goes and I had to watch how he fried the onion and everything like that. And I’ve taught quite a few people since and I always say to them, “No, you’ve got to come and you’ve got to sit down and watch me because that’s how my dad taught me.” [laughs] So that’s another legacy that, I suppose, he left me.

Mum coped a lot better than I thought. She’s got her sister out at Nannup. We stayed with her for a few days. Mum had her mum and dad living next door to them.

My Nanna had a stroke, so she was in the Nannup Hospital. My granddad stayed living next door to mum. Granddad passed away one morning, or one night, and mum went and found him in the house next door. He was cold and terrible.

After that, mum didn’t want to go out. So dad started doing the mail and stuff like that. Then one day, he said, “You have to go out. If I die first, don’t you ever do that. You keep living your life because we have…” So he, in a way, prepared her mentally for it.

Dad was nine years older than mum. They talked about that a lot because mum did, she went right into a shell. I think she had a little bit of a breakdown with that.

That’s what I worried about, but she didn’t. She said it took her a little while. She had to go back and do the markets. So come Saturday, she said, “Right, I’m going.” She said it was so hard. She does Gentle Gym. She said the first time for everything was so hard.

We acknowledge the anniversaries. We try and have lunch together or something like that, do something special. We shed a bit of a tear on that day. We try and still acknowledge that day, even though it was a bad day, but we try to make it a good day.

On his birthday or their wedding anniversary, mum always goes and puts flowers on his grave and does things like that. If I am out there, we just go up to the grave site and we sit on his tombstone. We’ve got him a beautiful… it’s a bit of an Italian one, marble and that, and we sit there and just talk pop.

I think the first anniversaries are the hardest, but after that, it’s just a case of, “Oh, it was dad’s birthday today.” Or mum will go, “I just went and put some flowers on dad’s grave.”

My husband was really good. He was really supportive. He got on really well with my father. It really hurt him as well.

His dad had Parkinson’s disease and they were in Bunbury. That’s probably more on his side. We didn’t get up there as much as we should have or could have, but we both had jobs and things like that.

When we went up there, we used to go and see him and I’d feed him sometimes. We support each other in that sort of way.

I bought a box and I put a lot of dad’s special things in there. One of his shirts. I can still sort of smell him on it. He was in the Italian army, so he had a little hat with a feather in it.

Just little bits and pieces of dad. I’ve got a box there, and sometimes if I’m feeling a bit down or something, I’ll look in it. I’ve actually got one for mum already. [laughs] So we put some stuff in there. Just little things that are special to me.

I’ve got a photo album in there. I’m in the process of doing those. One of dad’s family and then one of mum’s family, and then one of them together, because they’ve got a lot of lovely old photos. I’ve got my granddad and that.

Not a lot of photos of dad’s dad. They didn’t take a lot of photos in those days. We’ve only got one little one, I think. But yeah, I love the old photos, to look back on it.

 

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