Visiting Angels of Saint Cloud

Holly

My dad is 100% disabled from the military. The VA provides him with home care from Visiting Angels that come in every day from 10 am to 2 pm to do light housekeeping, laundry, fix his meals, make sure he takes his medication, and make sure he showers. They don't have to help him with the shower but just stay there so he doesn't fall. They then come back from 7 to 9 at night to make sure he takes the nighttime medication and make sure he uses oxygen, he has COPD, and it's set up. I know the workforce out there finds it hard to hire and keep employees. There's been a couple of times that we've had no-shows and that's kind of disheartening. I think the first couple of times, we didn't get a call from them. We were just sitting there and waiting and they didn't call. Nobody showed up so we ended up calling them. I don't know if they didn't call us because they knew somebody was there, they knew one of us was there. We called them to say we didn't have anybody there. They were like, "Oh yeah, they called in sick" so I said, "Well, can't you call us or don't you have a backup plan". They said, "Well, we're short on staff". We just started with them in December so it's all kind of new. They're good and I want to say that compared to some other clients that they have, my dad is probably low maintenance. They're there for 4 hours, 7 days a week. If they clean on Monday, I think Tuesday is when they change his bed and do his laundry. On Wednesday they come and it's like, "Okay, it doesn't need to be cleaned again. It was just to clean up on Monday". He likes his one meal late in the day. One day I had one of them make chocolate chip cookies. Another day they made some barley soup and we ate it later. We have to figure out a meal plan and say, "Ok, on Wednesday make him mashed potatoes and gravy and save it and we'll eat it later instead of eating it right there when you're done" I think most of them are pretty fine. If you tell them to do something, they'll do it. They come in and they clean up the toilet. He sleeps a lot but they try to interact and talk to him. We also get a nurse that comes every Thursday and she does his medication for a week. She changes his urostomy bag so he gets a new one every week. Last week I was there and he seemed to be having trouble breathing, and she thought so too, so she listened to his lungs and said he's got a gurgle at the right bottom left lung. I called the VA and they sent a month's medication.