Hey! I'm Back!

It's been awhile. Almost two months ago.

I was busy with my job, working second shift and coming back home late at night.

And because the agency that I worked for was a bit dicey and picky about blogs, I figured that I better cool it for awhile until I got a better idea of what I could get away with in my blog.

Well, it appears that I no longer need to worry about that.

You see, as of July 3rd, I was terminated. Yup. Axed. Sacked. Given the boot.

What was my heinous crime?

I made the mistake of trying to defend myself, of front of the parents of a consumer who was poised to bite me. The parents were rich and had sunk a lot of money into the house where I was working. And for some reason, the parents didn't think that I had a right to to assure that their son's teeth weren't going to connect with part of my body.

After dressing me down, they filed a formal complaint of verbal abuse against me with the Disabled Persons Protection Commission.

I was suspended from work with pay for ten days while the investigation got under way After the ten days were up, the company used what little accumulated earned leave I had in order to pay me.

Well, 30 days passed and DPPC still had not reached a conclusion. And because we hit the 30-day mark, company policy dictated that I'd be given the axe.

That's it. Pure and simple.

I received news of that decision on Saturday, the 6th, when FedEx delivered the agency's verdict.

At first I was flummoxed. I was pissed, too.

But after allowing it to sink in, I was grateful.

No longer had I to struggle to like a job that was taking me through the emotional ringer. As hard as I tried, I could not make myself like that job, especially after I got transferred to a new house where I had to deal with four adult males instead of five adult females.

In many ways, the transfer was initially agreeable to me. For one thing, I didn't have to worry about getting bitten (so I thought) at this house. This was a far more tranquil house.

However, I traded my fear of getting bitten for having to constantly clean up toilet accidents. Definitely not fun.

At my previous house, the girls were much more independent then the fellows at the new house. Very rarely did I have to deal with a toilet accident. However, there was this one girl who was targeting me, hence my being transferred to the new house.

At the new house, every day somebody was peeing or crapping his pants several times in one shift.

Also, giving adult males showers was no picnic. How I hated that, especially with the one-on-one fellow that I was assigned to.

My one-on-one was an amiable guy who suffered multiple seizure disorder. That I could deal with. The fellow had a vagus nerve stimulator implanted in his chest. Whenever he had a head drop seizure or a generalized seizure all I had to do was grab a magnet and swipe it over his chest. In moments I could feel him relaxing out of his seizure.

The beef that I had with my one-on-one was that he was a stubborn fellow. He didn't want to wear his soft helmet, which protected his head should he have a head drop while standing up.

And in the shower, he was a real challenge. He would try to grab the shower head to either spray the water all over the place or try to drink from it. Every night I would try to quickly give him his shower so that I could quickly get it out of the way. Once the shower ordeal was over, it was clear sailing for the rest of the shift, especially after he had been put to bed.

So, having been dismissed from my job, I don't miss any of that.

Nor do I miss the long, 85-mile round trip commute that I had to make.

The commute, along with the emotional difficulty of the job got to be such that I was having anxiety attacks while driving. All of a sudden I would go into a panic taking an exit, being deathly afraid that I was going to flip my car while trying to negotiate a tight curve. This had never happened to me before.

But now, I am back to feeling comfortable while driving. Today I realized that I actually did not go into a panic when I was getting onto the highway.

In many ways I am relieved to be spared having to make that long drive in order to clean up after toilet accidents and bathe stubborn adult males.

The downside, however, was that I lost my health insurance. And losing health insurance means that we're going to have to spend more money in order to make sure that we are insured.

But that's another story all together.

But one thing is for sure ~ I don't miss that job.