Episode 158: Caring in a Crisis
/Show transcript:
Welcome to The Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success. I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte.
This time…when you can’t work from home during Covid 19 – or at least, from your home…because your job is about hands-on care for other people.
“I love training the new blood that’s coming in and want to do this kind of work, I love training them. And I tell them all the time we need guys, we need men in this field.”
Home health aide is one of the fastest growing jobs in the US, and it’s done almost entirely by women.
“What we do on this earth for eachother is the only real thing that counts. It's not about the money, a paycheck is a side benefit for making an impact in the world, and in the lives of people.”
Two women on working with vulnerable people throughout a pandemic, and what that work means to them. Coming up on The Broad Experience.
Susie Rivera lives in New Braunfels, Texas. She’s Mexican-American, she’s 63 now and she’s been taking care of other people for a living…for more than 30 years.
I caught Susie on her cell phone just after she came back from her shift in a private home one day last month.
She started to study for a nurses degree back in the 70s…but she took a break at one point and never ended up completing her studies. Instead she became a CNA or certified nurse’s assistant. She says caregiving work was just a job to her for the first several years she was doing it. Then in the early 1990s her grandfather got sick and she went to help her grandmother take care of him.
“I was already working in a nursing home but I didn’t’ really – it wasn’t really – I didn’t really get more in touch with my job until I went over there and cared for my grandfather, a family member, you know, that’s what you have to do, treat them like you want your own family treated…”
AM-T: So it changed your attitude to the work you were doing?
“There you go. Yes ma’am.”
Since then she’s worked in other nursing homes, in family homes, and for ten years she worked at a hospice, helping care for the dying.
These days Susie works exclusively in clients’ homes. She gets ten dollars an hour for one of her jobs, fifteen for the night job she does at the weekend. And after living in a two-earner household for years, right now, she’s the only one supporting an extended family.
“My wife and I – we’ve been together 28 years – she was also in the medical field, and she worked in a nursing home, until recently, about 3-4 years ago she became disabled so she hasn’t been able to work. We have her sister, her niece, and her grand-niece living with us because they’re going through a hard time.”
They live in a mobile home and it’s a bit crowded at the moment. But Susie’s out a lot – she works about 60 hours a week right now.
During the week she works from 8a.m. to 4p.m. for an elderly man and his wife. She spends the day in their home preparing meals, and helping him with all the tasks of daily living. It was this client who first sounded the alarm about Covid 19 one morning earlier this year.
“He’s a doctor, he’s 98 years old, let me tell you a story. When this Covid was in China we were watching the news and I was making his breakfast and I put his breakfast on the table and he grabbed my hand and said, I’m not gonna lose you, am I? I said, what? ‘You’re not leaving me because of this?’ I said sir, we’re gonna work around this, I’m here for keeps, I’m not gonna be leaving you any time.”
Since Covid 19 hit Texas, Susie has been picking up all the groceries and prescriptions for the couple as well as taking care of things inside the home. Her client’s wife is younger but she’s still afraid to go out and bring the disease back home. So it’s on Susie to make sure she’s taking every measure to keep them all safe.
AM-T: Like what does this mean for you, are you wearing a mask, what precautions are you taking now?
“I have all this, the mask, gloves, sanitizer, washing hands frequently, whenever I come into contact with him, when I have to do intimate care, his bathing, shower, when I come into close contact with him, using the mask and gloves…keeping the area clean where his walker is, cleaning that all the time, his wheelchair, his bedside commode, just making sure it’s all clean…”
Then she has to worry about everyone in her house…for one thing, her wife has a few underlying conditions. And Susie’s concerned…we spoke before cases in Texas shot up and before mask-wearing in public was mandated.
“I’ve taken care of people with AIDS, people with tuberculosis, I know the precautions and I know what you need to do, I know what I’m doing is safe, but my stress level and my worry is other people…other people where you go into the store and they’re not wearing a mask, other people that aren’t taking precautions, that’s what I worry about.”
She won’t let her own family leave their home – she does all the shopping for everyone. On her days off, just to get a change of scene, they’ll go on drives – and this is Texas, so they don’t just drive 20 miles. They drive 100, 150 miles just to feel free, to see something different.
As well as her weekday job with the 98-year-old doctor, Susie works for an elderly woman two nights a week – she sleeps over at her house, including on Saturday nights.
AM-T: How many hours a week do you need to work to feel comfortable or at least OK, financially?
“Mmm, I would say…my ideal, what I’d love to do is work full time and have part time job of 20 hours, so that would be what, 70 hours a week…
AM-T: So for you, full time, what’s that, 50 hours a week?
Yeah, 50, 60 hours a week, yes.
AM-T: So that’s fulltime. And ideally you’d have a part-time job of 20 hours?
AM-T: So in an ideal work you’d be working 80 hours a week, which is double the work week people talk about?
“Right, but see, a lot of us who do home care, we work two jobs because we’re not getting paid the wage we think we need to just get by and pay our bills.”
Susie is lucky compared to many other home care workers – she says the lady she works for on the night shift is wealthy and she pays for Susie’s health insurance. And health insurance is not something every home health aide in America has access to.
Susie says this is the most difficult time of her working life, but there’s still a lot she loves about her job.
“The people I care for, they have been all sorts of walks of life, they’ve got different achievements and accomplishments in their life, just like my mom and dad, they’re still alive, I want them to live their golden years out. It’s such a – I have brought, people I have taken care of, I’ve brought them to my house for Thanksgiving, I’ve brought them to my house for Christmas…and it just…I really feel elderlies are being neglected, and it’s just a good feeling to do my part and I’m really worried when I get to be that age – who’s going to be there for us?”
AM-T: Do you think of what you do as a job or a career – or a calling?
“It’s a calling. Hands down it’s a calling. I love training the new blood that come in and want to do this kind of work, I love training them. And I keep telling them we need men, we need guys in this work because the population, you know we’re living longer, we’re getting bigger, and we need men to come in and help us, you know, as far as lifting people and getting people taking care of, transferring them, getting them into and out of a car, a vehicle. I love training the new people, and everyone that comes in I give them my phone number, that’s learning this job, and I say call me any time day or night, I’ll walk you through it. Because you’ll really like it once you get into it.”
She says few men DO train for this job. Some that do end up as registered nurses. She loves to see that.
She’s waiting to retire for as long as she can, so she and her wife will have the most comfortable retirement possible. She says she’s pretty fit and she’s got it in her to work several more years.
But she wishes the current situation would calm down.
“I’ve seen it all and done it all and I really thought I had until this pandemic came – I have been through so much stress and I just want everyone to know, everyone who cares for elderly or cares for disabled, that just do your job and do what you can, and we’ll get through this…and just everybody stay safe.”
Susie Rivera in Texas.
My next guest lives and works in the northeast, where Covid 19 spiked in the spring and is now coming under control. Maria Colville lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But she was born and raised in Trinidad.
“My mom was a Red Cross nurse most of my life. And so sometimes I would go with her when she goes to carnivals and so forth, and any major event she had to be on site. And in my village, she was known as the village nurse where everybody popped in with a scratch or something broken or something bleeding or whatever…our house was like the general hospital for our local communities. And so watching her and experiencing the compassion and the joy that she got out of helping others, selflessly, impacted me.”
Before she emigrated to the US Maria worked for a credit union in Trinidad. But she says corporate life didn’t really suit her – she liked the idea of helping people the way her mother had. Like Susie, she’s been looking after the vulnerable and elderly for three decades And the pandemic has had a big effect on her life.
Normally, she’d work with three clients simultaneously, going to different homes on different days or at different times of the day. Until recently she worked 30 hours a week. But the coronavirus has changed all that.
“I have chosen to stay with one client right now, she's in her seventies. And I am aware of the atmosphere, I'm aware of the fear of coming into contract with COVID-19, especially when you have pre-existing conditions, which she does, which most of our consumers do. And so, for that safety in the atmosphere, for that comfort for her in that atmosphere I choose right now to stay with one consumer while I get assistance financially.”
She’s been able to get some unemployment through the CARES act. It goes some way to making up for the salary she’s losing right now by working with just one client, twice a week.
Maria says she and her client share something important that makes it easier for her to do this work right now, despite the risks…
“I think one of the great things about working with my consumer is she's a faith-based person, and having faith in God is her foundation, and so the belief is when you are a child of God, everything that concerns you concerns him. And so there's that promise of a protective barrier over you and that no matter what is happening, it is going to work together for your good, and not your hurt.”
AM-T: “And what about you, you also have a deep faith, right, how do you feel about going out to work right now?”
“I'm not worried. I'm not worried about it because I believe that in a crisis, not doing anything is not an option. It is people who are well that has to get on the front lines to assist those who are not. I am not a part of the problem. I am a part of the solution. And so, because I know that, and I'm aware of that. And yes I'm a faith-based person. I know that God has called me for a time such as this, everything that I have been trained in, um, my mentality going in or dealing with any aspects of fear is covered, I don't have a reason to worry, if I die, I die doing what I'm called to do, I die helping others.”
Now all this said…Maria is taking the same precautions as Susie Rivera. She’s a member of the Service Employees International Union and she says the Union supplies its members with protective equipment to the extent it can – but when it runs out and has trouble sourcing more supplies – and this is very common in the US – aides like Maria are on their own.
“And even right now we’re still having problems getting gloves…masks we’re able to get, but gloves is still on high demand – there are not enough. One of the good things is close to me in Cambridge is a convenience store that has a ready supply of personal protective equipment.”
She says the prices are decent, and when the Union’s supplies run out, she buys what she needs out of her own pocket.
I asked Maria the same question I asked Susie. What does she like most about this job, an intimate, hands-on job that isn’t well paid?
“The opportunity to make an impact in someone else's life, the opportunity to be an extension by which another person can feel whole. When your body betrays you, what happens is you're accustomed to walking or talking or doing things for yourself, and somewhere along the line, you lose the ability to do that. To have someone come into your life that is able to allow you to achieve the same goal in an area that you can no longer perform. That that is major, that is major…that is an extension of your life that you value. And so how could you not want to make an impact like that?”
AM-T: Do you feel valued in your work?
“Yes. That's not always so with every consumer, I've worked with consumers who are very negative, negative in terms of the mindset of superiority, where you're looked down upon because it seems as though your job is minimum wage, or it's my home, you just need to do what I do, your opinion is not important. If I am a healthcare professional, and I'm coming to assist you with the things you cannot do, how can I not be of value?”
Maria doesn’t say in so many words that it’s white people who are condescending to her, but she does say this…
“Systemic racism is coming, crashing down. It does not belong in our society.
And so people can be very mean, even though you're helping them. And sometimes it's not just about the way they're thinking, it's because of their, also, frustration. They can't do what they want to do that was normal to them. Who likes someone between their legs, cleaning them, washing them and having them naked and having to brush their teeth and having... Nobody would choose that if they had a choice in the matter, so they're betrayed by their own physical body or their own mind, and so the only way they feel better is lashing out, even though they’re lashing out at the person who's helping them. That is why you can't take anything personally, it's not about us.”
She always tries to remember that.
She knows that her work is helping others – whether they acknowledge it or not. And that is its own reward.
“What we do on this earth for eachother is the only real thing that counts. It's not about the money, we're not just here to make an income, a paycheck is a side benefit for making an impact in society, in the world, and in the lives of people…I'm excited about what is happening in the midst of this crisis, because it's not all negative. People are coming back to the core of who they are. They’re discovering the true meaning of why they’re here. And that’s a really big deal.”
Thanks to Maria Colville and Susie Rivera for being my guests on this show.
And if you’d like to hear another show that focuses on women who work in other people’s homes tune into episode 73 – it’s called A Nanny Speaks Up. And in that show we cover some of the power imbalance that happens when your work isn’t in a neutral place like an office but on your employer’s home turf.
That’s The Broad Experience for this time. If you have any comments on this episode you can post under this episode at The Broad Experience dot com, or email me via the website or tweet me or post on the Facebook page. I’d love to hear from you.
If you’d like to support this one-woman show you can do that via the support tab on the website.
I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte. Thanks as ever for listening.