Not my Day

Ruby's discharge had been delayed twice and was finally scheduled for this afternoon. Let me say here I am not having a good week and the window I had in which to carry out a risk assessment for this lady before commencing care tonight was barely wide enough to squeeze my ample hips through, thus when she had not appeared by 3.30 I asked the receptionist to ring hospital and check if she had left. He rang the social work department rather than the ward and proceeded to harangue the Senior Social Worker and then tell her "not to speak to him like an idiot" when she tried to explain he was speaking to the wrong people. Some days it feels like trying to herd cats.... Thankfully said Senior has known me for years and was very generous when I apologised. I will gloss over my subsequent meeting with the staff member, the bright spot is that he is only covering Mat leave and I may still have a business when he leaves.
I arrived at Ruby's at 4.30 pm with raised blood pressure and about thirty minutes to conduct a full environmental and personal risk assessment. The front door was unlocked and I let myself into the hallway, my high heels echoing on a splendid tiled hall floor. Ruby was in the front room, a room that had obviously been used as a storage cum dumping ground for some years. I have no idea why some old people put piles of clothing and towels and general detritus on a sofa and then put a blanket over the resultant mountain range but they do, and this was where I found Ruby perched. Her zimmer frame was in front of her, plonked on top of the hose for a vacuum cleaner that was helpfully wound around its legs. It didn't really matter a hell of a lot since whoever had put it there had obviously lifted it into the room, there was no way it was going to fit through the tiny gap between the side board and the sofa if she wanted to get out of the room. Ruby had a blue hospital carrier bag on the floor beside her and very little idea about anything.
She didn't know the number of the key safe on her front door, her next of kin was not listed with a phone number and she was extremely worried about the whereabouts of her cat and didn't want any sort of conversation until Tiddles had been located. Perfect.
A further examination showed that the house was not actually too bad, there was an adapted bathroom and a big kitchen with a cosy armchair and, best of all, there proved to be a further sitting room that had been converted to a bedroom and had a commode and a raised armchair. I extricated Ruby from the defunct front room by the unusual method of lifting the zimmer out first and going back for the customer and took her through to the bed sitting room while I made her the cup of tea she was gasping for and looked for the cat.
The cat was awol, the bed was unmade and Ruby had no idea where the sheets might be and bizarrely, I could not locate a cutlery drawer so I had to measure sugar into the tea from the canister and stir it with a knife. Searching for the cutlery did locate a pack of sheets and a mattress cover so I set to to make the bed, unsurprised when the sheets had to be wrestled onto the new deep mattress as they did not even approximately fit. Job done, I finally sat down and started to fill out my forms and then the family arrived.....
I accept that I have prejudices, we all have them, and the only way to deal with people fairly is to allow for your preconceptions. Ruby's family broke new ground though. Her son in law was wearing a pair of trousers that looked as though they had enjoyed their heyday in the psychedelic Sixties teamed with an unraveling sweater and a large woolly hat. His eyes looked in opposite directions and he seemed reluctant to speak to me although, on the bright side, he did know the combination for the key lock. Ruby's granddaughter was probably as wide as she was high and had long black tangled hair and a full mustache. She didn't want to speak to me either, she just stood behind her father in the hallway tearing bits off a full cooked chicken and stuffing them in her mouth - you couldn't make it up.
I completed the paperwork in record time, now forty five minutes late for my next appointment, and packed up my things, promising Ruby that a carer would visit at about 9pm to put her to bed. Ruby had taken a shine to me by this time and didn't want me to leave but I extricated myself and shot out of the front door at a run - to fall over the missing cat and land head first in an extremely muddy puddle - obviously herding cats is not my forte....