Something is amiss here. Maybe you can help me sort it out.
Mary's father was a drinker most of his life. During the first six years of Mary's life he would drink, come home, and push her mother around. But then Mary's mother pushed him out of the house, and he left.
He kept drinking and seeing Mary and her brother about once a month, not being much of a father but not totally forgetting either.
Now thirty years later, Mary's mother is off in Florida and Mary's father has been sober for ten years. He is isolated, bitter, and alone, but he calls Mary once a week and has since he's been sober.
Last month he had a heart attack. Mary rushes to the hospital and they can barely keep him alive. They ship him off to one of the Big City hospitals where the doctor tells Mary that they can try this new medicine on him. If it works he could survive, if it doesn't he will die. If they don't try it he will be dead in half an hour.
So, what can she say? Bingo, they pump the stuff right into his heart and equip him with a computerized pump that will keep the medicine flowing into him.
Two weeks later he is ready to leave the hospital. They have taught Mary how to refill the pump, and that needs to be done every day. They taught her how to fix the pump, or install a new one if it breaks. That has to be done in four minutes or her old man drops dead. They also tell her that someone will come out, once or twice to try and train her father, but basically Mary has to do that if she wants to stop being responsible for keeping hims alive.
Her father is too scared to even think about the thing.
Mary asks for a visiting nurse to help, or if he can go to a rehab hospital to get trained on how to use the device.
No. No one will come to help. The device is so new, and the chance for fatal error so great that no one will touch him or the machine. No one wants to be blamed. The liability is too great.
So Mary is stuck taking care of this guy who never really took care of her. She is trying to get her brother to be of some help but he isn't too fond of the old man, and seems to have some of his problems.
So, right now, Mary has the old guy on her couch, bitching about everything, and asking her for food, drink, care and comfort.
He once saw that she was getting exhausted from it all so he tried to change the medicine himself. He forgot to clamp a tube and his blood shot across the living-room. No too comforting.
14 comments:
Life is such a cruel joke sometimes. The only option I would have would be to help him and take care of him, although I don't think this would be the right answer for everyone. Mary will have to think it through for awhile and come to her own answer, and whatever she chooses is okay. There is no rule written that says she has to do this.
My first suggestion is to find out where the doctor lives and park dad in a lawn chair, in the middle of the doctor's driveway until he does his job and helps her get some help.
Second, call the manufacturer of the pump and tell them it is going to be a sad day for them if they don't send someone to help with the training, and something happens to dad.
Third, call the media... LOUD and often. Maybe even her congressman, senator, or representative. Their offices have more clout than she will, and that is what we elect and pay them for.
Lastly, in our area we have an organization that is set up to look out for senior's needs. Get out the phone book and start looking for senior resouces that can help, both physically and finacially.
Life might not be fair, but if she can take on this problem and find a working solution it will be good for her inner strength.
I realize that you change their names, but do your clients know that you write about them this way, and do you have their permission?
A client elsewhere
Just so you know... As one of my posts, I wrote as unbiased a question as I could about what my readers, (an eclectic, if not random sample, including one graduate psychology student) - thought about how you discuss your clients problems here, and there were nine responses. I apologize I don't know how to make a link here, but the address of the post is: http://conversationsintime.blogspot.com/2008/01/new-confidentiality-question.html
Thank you for responding to my concerns. Your comment is posted.
I am very interested and learn a lot from personal stories of how people grapple with the problems in their lives, and find the dialogue here intriguing. I have had your link posted on my blog for a long time, and didn't ask that question until some of my readers criticized me (one extremely harshly) for posting two personal emails on line (one to me, one from me) - anonymously. The other anonymous person involved in the emails lives on the other side of the world, isn't a blogger, and the very few friends we have in common don't know I write, and he had given me permission to write without inhibition about the subject of concern if it would help me.
But I was what felt like "attacked" regardless for the breach in confidentiality by posting something very personal I was too overwhelmed by and didn't know what to say about indirectly yet, and needed to express through writing.
I'm a relatively new blogger, and don't know the "rules," and did not mean to cause harm to anyone, and was told I was "self-serving", and "should never be trusted."
So I was trying to understand blogging confidentiality boundaries when I asked about your blog - and in the past of my life, confidentiality in itself has been most important to me in terms of therapy.
My concerns about your blog are assuaged EXCEPT that some reader who might be in need of therapeutic help, might not understand the care to which you take to protect your clients, and might not seek the help they need out of mistrust.
And I would feel good about your blog, and definitely interested in a therapist's perspective of things, and would follow it without voyeuristic guilt, (and not call it "questionable") - if the degree to which you protect anonymity were clarified at the top, first thing.
It is out of care and confusion that I'm asking.
Thank you, and I hope you didn't feel unfairly accused, like I did.
Mary should call hospice
As a student in college for psychology, my first thought was, "How do you (as a psychologist) begin to deal with that?!" The post made me want to cry....how do you not get too emotionally invested, so that someone else's misfortunes don't break you, but just emotionally attatched enough that you're a personable and effective psychologist? I hope they have a course in that along the road: "Dealing with the rough stuff 101."
It is perfectly acceptable for health service providers and other professionals (i.e. lawyers) to use information from their clients in public forums. This is what law mandates. Do not pressue The Therapist into feeling bad for what he does. The most successful psychologists, doctors, lawyers, etc. publish information pertaining to their experiences with clients.
He is under no obligation to disclose what he does to his clients at anytime.
Odd ... my therapist and I had this discussion today concerning the care of my mother, my choices, my health ... my husband's need for me ... priorities ... and things that must be decided.
Care in the face of resentment ... is much harder, far more stressful and does not suit either party.
tic - I wasn't intending to pressure The Therapist to feel bad for what he does. I'm just a client who feels especially vulnerable and was a little concerned about it. I wasn't intending to make a case against his work or expression of his work, and I apologize if that's how my question felt. I should have asked here first, but I'm still concerned about the lack of clarity about his protection of his clients scaring away people (like me) who very much need therapy and are very wary, mistrustful, and respectful of it at the same time. That's all. I apologize for any bad feelings.
+phc I would suggest that you talk to your own therapist and express your concerns about your confidentiality. I think that if you specifically stated that you did not want your case shared in such a manner it would not be and that if you were to specifically address this issue with your therapist the two of you could clarify this in your specific case
ugh. bad situation. on one hand, human compassion shouldn't be a tit-for-tat thing, really, should it? but i can definitely understand her resentment.
the gospel of free will says that she has made the decision to take on this responsibility, and that the old man has made the decision not to learn to care for himself. the forgotten clamp thing? that could have been "selective ineptness", also known as see-what-happens-when-you-don't-take-care-of-me syndrome, or it could be that he made an honest error but Mary, in her need to be needed, has taken that as a sign that he can't ever be allowed to do it for himself again.
if his life is in such a precarious balance anyway, i'd wager he won't live too long. it's only a matter of time until something goes wrong or the power blinks and an alarm clock fails to go off. which evens out to neutral, maybe?
Rain- I am fortunate enough to be able to go to a low-income research clinic where I believe I receive very good care with less privacy than would be preferable to me, which has been a discussion I've had with different professionals there at different times, and there are no more comfortable options there. - which I have accepted uncomfortably. I'm still interested in the issue of confidentiality and wanted to know if others did. Any negative responses on my blog were based on not understanding the care to which The Therapists protects his clients confidentiality. Not about what the Therapist is actually doing, so I have voiced my concern and apologized for any bad feelings.
I remember, as a child, hearing a proverb or something to the effect of 'If you save someone's life, you are forever responsible for it.'
That's what this reminds me of.
poor Mary & poor Mary's father. Without modern medicine, he's probably be in peace.
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