Caregiver (Part 1)

 

Well, I know everyone is having a hard time. I know I am. The rollercoaster ride I've been on for the last 7 years has had me at the highest and lowest of lows. At one point I thought I made it the next I thought I would end up homeless. 

I tend not to put everything out there for public consumption. It's something my granny told me a long time ago. Sometimes you have to give a little or people will think you're just fine and nothing is wrong. I've always been that guy that helps others and declines help cause I can handle it. 

The times we are going into now. NO ONE should think they can handle it alone, especially me. I have been through so much. The passing of my grandmother at the hospice and the hospitalization of my mother at the same time. I reached out to people who declined to help me. So I just kept it moving. I stopped asking because I felt it was a waste of time, no one was coming to my rescue. I went through 3 years of trying to see about my granny after she passed. Got her to a funeral home but couldn't do anything else while my mother was on a breathing tube in the ER. 

I worked to do everything for my mother. I took over handling the house, and the budget and started making necessary cuts. The next 3-4 months were hard. I dealt with her in the ER at Mercy, then the step down at Francian in Hammond, and lastly at the rehab. 

Mercy was great in giving me the support I needed. It was her hospital and they were familiar with me also. When it was time for her to go to the step-down facility I got a list. Most were way up north or way out west. I chose the one at Francian, In hindsight, I shouldn't have. 

That facility wasn't the best and when dealing with the staff you had a sense of impending doom. They had nice smiling faces at first but as I dealt with them and they realized I was the only person that was related to her coming. I think they started to see dollar signs with my mother being there. My first thing was when they had me do financial paperwork. I went through it but I felt like they asked far too many questions and some of those papers I probably didn't need to sign. I found out later after she passed that was true. Luckily I had her tax people correct that. 

Next, I had this trippy relationship with the nurses. Again being nice at first then little incidents started to happen. One day I come in and they have her in mits. I asked why and they said she scratched someone. I couldn't believe it but I knew I wasn't in a position to argue about it. They looked like they were ready for me to get disruptive. I called out to my mother's friends on Facebook. Thank god for Tanya she was a heaven-sent. She allowed me to better manage the situation because there was someone there who understood the high medical speak they were trying to use around me to keep in confused. 

Then one day I came in, and my mom's feed tube had a pin leak in it. Her physical therapists were in the room so they went to get the nurse. When she came in her first words out of her mouth were "What did she do now?". I turned around and said, "Excuse me?". At that point she tried to get nasty with me, my instincts kicked in, and realized she might be trying to get into an argument with me. So I just was like whatever and turned to look out the window. After that, even her case manager started to get testy with me. 

My mind was to report the nurse but not while my mother was still there. 

One Saturday I got there and it was another nurse that usually doesn't work that area filling in. We had a conversation. I can't really tell you what happened exactly because I don't know if this nurse still works for them. but I got some information about them putting a laundry list of incidents on her record, biting, scratching and spitting on people. I know my mother the former RN isn't doing that. When I get there she was calm it was with help with the drugs she was on. So I noted that and acted accordingly. I knew I couldn't go off and I couldn't be out of line in that hospital or they would have kicked me out and tried to say I wasn't fit to be there or be in charge and they could have done anything. 

So the time was getting close for her to go to her next step, rehab, at Burbank Rehabilitation Center. My heaven-sent helped me pick out a place. I was happy mother was getting out of Francian. I spoke to the director of BRC before the move. But there was a delay because the director insisted she be off all those drugs before the move. So another week later she was off to rehab. 

I went to go visit her and when I entered the room I got hit with a massive amount of heat, she was in a room with someone else, and next to her bed, there was a hole in the wall. I walked out and asked the nurses where was the director's office. She told me she wasn't in today. But I got her email and sent her and message telling her how displeased I was with her accommodations.  

So I got a response from her apologizing for the situation. I went to visit her the next day and I started walking towards the room she was in. The nurse stopped me and asked where was I going and told me my mother was in the first room. I came in and it was cool, clean and she was the only person in the room. She was attentive and happy to see me. We hugged and talked. She told me this is the first time she really knew where she was since she went to the hospital in the beginning. I was still mad about the step-down and I knew I needed to go back there and put my complaints in. For now, I'm gonna enjoy time with my mother. 

End of Part 1.

THE OLIGARCHY IS HERE | The Kyle Kulinski Show

A story during my time as a special service agent (wheelchair pusher) at O'hare.

 

When I'm driving Uber or Lyft I always use something that happened in my life to make a point with a passenger. I realized no one heard this story besides the passengers and a few friends, so I want to tell everyone about it now. 

I get a passenger with another person. We get to the gate and it's an elderly white couple. No biggie there. Some of the family came to the gate to meet them. They saw me and my Latina co-worker. The son walks up to me, leans in, and says. I hope this isn't an issue but can we get some white wheelchair pushers. 

I took a second to allow myself time to answer this with professionalism. I looked him in his face and leaned in further and whispered to him. "Well if I go back to special services and tell them you want a white wheelchair pusher, you won't get any pusher." He responds with "Can we just get two wheelchairs and we can push them. I looked around like I was going to tell him the biggest secret. "No, all wheelchairs come with pushers. There aren't any for passengers to use." 

He looked puzzled. Then I said to him... "Look, we can do this. You can help both of them in and out of the wheelchairs. We won't lay a hand on them. Then we will push them to baggage claim where we will let you get them out and we will leave. This is just business nothing personal. You get the wheelchairs and we do our job." 

At that point, I leaned into my co-worker who was trying to figure out what was going on. I told her to just let them handle getting them in and out of the chair and push them where they are going. The son is racist and asked for a white wheelchair pusher. I told him if we went to get one, they wouldn't get a chair. 

So as I was talking to her, they were getting them seated in the wheelchair. The wildest thing happened. The elderly couple were the nicest people we both had conversations with our passengers and the rest of the family. We get to baggage claim. They get them out of the chair and the guy who asked for white wheelchair pushers gave both of us a 10 dollar bill. We both looked shocked because we expected to get stiffed. See what you get when you come at someone in the correct manner. 

Incredible Hulk ending theme music Lonely man

Mother's day

Today has been a hard day, I don't know how to feel about today. I decided to stay by myself. Only going to the church to give Andre the laptop that I promised him. Then I came back home and decided to fix me something to eat and I just kind of sat around. I didn't turn on the TV. I didn't watch anything. I am just getting ready for tomorrow just keeping it moving. I'm sure my mother would want me to. 

The State of Kenneth.

I tried to make this not be a novel. Hopefully its insightful. It turned out to be more than a state of since I had to go back and give context. 

After I watched the state of the union I had an idea. I would do the state of me. Why you might ask. Well those who are really close to me know I'm guarded. It was something taught to me by my grandmother. It has its benefits and its drawbacks. Right now for me the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. 

The benefits it keeps people that shouldn't be in your business out of it. It's different for each of us. For me its the talkers that go around talking about what's bad that's going on in your life but never anything good. So other's that talk to them have the impression that you live in chaos. You might say, I don't care what other people thing. That's not the point. You get a lot of flack you just don't want in your life. So that's one benefit my granny showed me because he had examples of it around us. 

The drawbacks I'm living through right now. Most people thing I'm doing fine. I'm not. I'm broke, unemployed, behind on my mortgage and about to be behind on my utilities this month for the first time. The firs thing you might thing is, there are programs out here to help. Already in the one for the mortgage and its paper hell that I haven't gotten pass yet. My utilities you know you have to be behind to get in any one of these programs so I don't qualify until after these due dates. 

Jobs, I've been applying to jobs since June. The one thing I noticed is that employers are posting the same job over and over. They will post it in June then take it down after about 6 weeks, then post it again in maybe October, then do the same. Never even looking at applications. One good thing about Indeed and Glassdoor is that you are notified when employers look at you application. The majority of my applications never get looked at once. Those are the companies that are only putting out feelers. So don't believe in that resent jobs report those numbers aren't accurate. Back to my situation, the jobs I do get interviews with I feel go good then I reflect on it later and realized things. Like I was interviewing with Eastlake, the guy that interview me wasn't the hiring manager or hr. It was a guy they just hired in the same department I'm applying for the job. In the interview he exposed something about the company in a form of a what would I do in this scenario. I think he was looking at my reaction to it more than my solution. The scenario seemed common but when he revealed what was wrong it wasn't. For all my techies reading this they don't use DHCP so they assigned themselves addresses. In laymen. You turn on you computer. it goes out and gets an address from a server and sets your computer to that address so you can access the internet. Well in Eastlake that serve doesn't exist. So my reaction was wow. I held what I thought in my head that this office is in the stone age. But I did mention there is a lot of thoughts going on in my head but hey I can deal with that. So you think my reaction might have been negative? Do you think I didn't get the job because I was being interviewed by a peer? Dunno myself.

You might say hey, you got a IT services/consulting business. Aren't you making money there? The simple answer is no. When my granny decided to stop dialysis and went into the hospice, then my mother got sick and went into the hospital in December of 2018. I shut down my business as I couldn't manage it and this situation at the same time. During that time I had great people step up and help me. My mother's good friend Rita, my best friend Dawud, and several of my mother's former coworkers in the department of health. Especially Tanya, if it wasn't for her and the physical therapist at the hospital I would have had a problem with that hospital and how they were treating my mother. Tanya being on the phone in the Tuesday meetings with the doctors stopped them from using hard medical terms to talk over me. The therapist showed me something that looked like they were trying to say my mother didn't have all her facilities. But of course I can't say for sure but it looked like it. But I'm was happy to get her back home the day after her birthday in 2019. 

After she got home I still didn't go back into business. I was her full time caregiver. I felt I couldn't go back and not be here since she was in a wheelchair. I didn't have anyone that was willing to come over if I did get a job or went back into my business. So I stayed home. 

We get to December 2021, we had discussion on what I wanted to do after her death. It's a discussion a lot of people avoid, not us. She was concerned how I would live after she was gone for several reasons. One, when I started my business she was my sole angel investor. She got my off the ground and kept my skeleton services like my domain, my mailing address at University CoWork and my Google Workspaces going during the pause. 

So we talked and I wasn't sure. There was the issue of the house and if I wanted to keep it or sell it. I waffled back and forth. I want to stay in this community, Its probably the reason I never lived in any other part of Chicago. Then you look at this old house that was built around 1890. The upkeep on a house like this is harder and condition its in right now I need to rehab it. So in the middle of those discussions she passed away. 

Now I have decided to stay. Right now I'm still applying for jobs. I've also joined the Polsky Exchange in Hyde Park to seek assistance with my business. I'm re-engaging with University CoWork a source of help for me in the past. I'm in the process of looking at financial assistance from the SBA. 

With all that is going on its hard to focus. I slip on certain things, I'm in this constant paper hell. Also I have situations I know I did what people asked me but they claimed I didn't. I feel sometimes I need an assistant to help me keep this in order. There is light at the end of the tunnel I'm just trying to keep working towards it. Its kinda the reason I reached out on Facebook before asking people to hang out with me. The one thing that helps me out the most is being around people. Just me and Adora my cat isn't good for me or her. I find she is just like me. When people come by she greets them. We are alike in that sense. 

One last thing I know this read is LONG. I recently put out a t-shirt shop. That is my way of trying to finance myself in the short term and also those shirts help me if you wear them out. Yes advertising. I'm sure you knew that. So I would appreciate you buying a t-shirt. https://www.bonfire.com/store/litzsey-tech-services/  Also if your a home, home office or business user looking for a IT solution you can schedule a consultation with me. Appointment with me I hope to hear from you soon. 

The Aroma

 As someone who smoked cigars I find myself at time thinking about it but not in the sense of addiction. Just in the great aromas. I bought one recently with the intent of smoking it. but Its on my desk, never been lit but I'm just enjoying the aroma it leaves in the room. 

I wonder if someone has capitalized on this yet. This can be like any other scented product. I'm a guy that likes flavors cigars so the tobacco plus flavor can be something for those of us who smoke for the aroma and not any other reason. I can say personally if I could get the cigar scent. I might not need to smoke it. 

Just something I thought about this morning as I smell this cigar on my desk.