The Hardest Job That Isn't a Job

Over my career I worked for some pretty demanding bosses and clients. When I started my career in Information Technology I was still a full time student taking 16+ semester hours at BYU. I was expected to put in an additional 40-60 hours operating data centers and developing software for government and government agencies. Usually this included an hour commute between home and the client site. I flourished. My grades were fantastic and I was learning every second of the day (and night, and weekends). Later in my career my client list included companies like Nintendo, IBM, Armstrong Flooring and Coca Cola. These clients were demanding and required performance. You didn't just sort of do something, you did it completely and precisely. I flourished and my income was fantastic. I was still learning every second of the day (and night, and weekends).

Now I don't have a job. I can't follow a precise schedule and there are too many things I just can't do because of the physical pain resulting from my auto crash. My mind can't work like it used to. My fingers can't type like I used to and my left hand is somewhere between useless and a huge impediment to what I'm trying to do. Two to three times a day I break out in massive sweats that usually necessitate a change in clothing, often a shower. At any moment my energy can just drop to nothing, zero, absolute nada. Even breathing requires the help of a CPAP machine. You know you've screwed up when you need a machine to help you breathe.

The hardest part is that my new boss is my wife and my non-job job is watching after her parents. The are both octogenarians with dementia. Papi is pretty much deaf. Mima has Parkinson's and a number of neurosis and psychosis that she has cultivated throughout her life. Every day is different. What worked yesterday may not work today. What worked five minutes ago may not work now. Lately their slide into dementia has turned into a free fall with all sorts of radical behaviors.

The problem is that when your client/patient/customer is your wife's parents every thing you do, every word you say is evaluated at a level you have never encountered before. You can't follow her lead because using the words she uses would be "inappropriate for you. When you criticize them it's different." Your voice can't be too loud or too soft. This is really fun when one of them is almost stone deaf, but if you are too loud you will be chastised and if you're too quiet how can you expect them to hear and understand you? Your tone cannot be too adamant. This is a slippery, moving standard. If you have had a full day of difficult compliance you may have gotten to the point that you recognize you have to provide instructions in drill sergeant  mode for them to understand what to do. Even then you have to watch to make sure than don't completely do the opposite of their instructions, for example "It's not time to go to bed, don't go to bed" is interpreted as "go to bed", that being the only snippet of what you said they chose to process. Further just because last time you told them to "put on their pajamas" they actually put on their pajamas with no further participation is simply unacceptable. "Where do you come off telling them to put on their pajamas without getting their pajamas out for them?" The response, "it worked last time" is considered argumentative.

My day starts at 7 AM. Usually Mima is awake and the moment I walk past their door she begins asking for things, usually things she doesn't need. You repeat a hundred times "breakfast will be at 9 o'clock" and when she asks 10 seconds later where her breakfast is you try to calmly respond "breakfast will be at 9 o'clock". You are dealing with a toddler mentality, but instead of getting better, they are getting worse. On top of that they still retain all their adult conniving, resistance and disagreeable nature to thwart any attempt to help them. They still feel that they are entitled to complete obeisance, so when you prevent them from doing something their hours watching Caso Cerrado empower them to become at home lawyers accusing you of abuse.

With my supervisors and clients they demanded perfection and mostly, I was able to give it to them. The rewards were empirical. In this new job, there is always another way it could have been done and if you didn't do it they way your boss expected, you will find out between 0.1 and 1.0 seconds after you have done it. You see, when it's somebody's parents that are at stake, there is no allowance for human frailty. After six, eight or ten hours of effort trying to make their lives as livable as possible you are expected, despite your fatigue, pain and frustration to do nothing that might be insufficient. The worst part is that I want it to be perfect, I want it to be always good enough. This is the first time in my life I have faced a challenge that has resulted in constant criticism of my performance.

So what do you do? You try again. You fight the fatigue, the pain and the anxiety and you try to help two 80 year old Cubans feel that their life is perfect.