Bathing, Dressing and Grooming Help in Sunrise
By some distance the riskiest room in a house, and the help a person is least pleased to accept. Taken slowly, then written down, because a bathroom shows change before anywhere else does.
The room to keep an eye on
Wet tile, a high rim to step over, and balance that no longer recovers in time make this the likeliest spot in a house for a bad fall, and the hardest room for a family to oversee.
The job is not complicated. It wants one unhurried person who warms the room first, puts everything inside arm's length, and makes no occasion of the parts that can no longer be done alone.
It is also where the fourth week finds its sharpest evidence. Four separate accounts of the same short stretch will show a decline nobody could have put into words on the telephone.
This is seldom bought on its own. It normally sits inside a longer morning call, which is the sensible arrangement, since the aide is in the house already and the room is warm.
Where a household wants nothing else, a short call can be arranged, subject to the minimum length discussed on the first telephone call.
Inside the twenty minutes
Set up, carried out and cleared away, usually inside twenty-five minutes.
The room first
Warm, dry underfoot, towels and clothing inside reach before a single button is touched.
Standing, sitting or at the basin
Whichever is honestly safe that morning, not whichever was agreed a month ago.
Hair, shave, teeth
Finished properly instead of abandoned because the shower ran long.
Dressed to their own taste
Chosen by them, laid ready, with help appearing only where a fastening has won.
A look at the skin
Bruises, dry patches, pressure marks, visible at that moment and noted when anything has moved.
A dry room left behind
Mats hung up, the floor dried, towels cleared. A good share of preventing the next fall belongs to the minutes after the water goes off.
Not part of this visit
- Dressings, and any care of a wound
- A bath ordered by a clinician as treatment
- Toenails, once diabetes or poor circulation is involved
- Lifting by hoist where no kit or plan exists
- Hairdressing of any sort; washing and shaving is as far as it goes
- Whatever is refused that particular morning
One morning, described four times
A month of entries about the same short stretch of the day reveals what one visit never can.
Ask what month one looks like — (754) 254-1717