Sunday, December 12, 2010

Day 65

I worked from home today.  When I say that I actually do work.  I was able to answer a lot of emails and phone calls.  Jacob slept late and so this made it easy to get those things done. 
The miracle of today is about work and changing people's attitudes.  A year or so ago I had a client in the hospital and she was sick, not deathly sick, but sick to the point that she was sleeping a lot of the time and not coherent.  I had gone to visit her and the first thing I noticed was that her hair had been cut.  She had long hair before, hair down to the middle of her back, she always kept it in braids or well groomed.  I was shocked.  This upset me a lot.  To most people this may not seem like a big deal but really her hair was something precious to her and to have had someone to just decide that it was too difficult to take care of when she was in the hospital really perturbed me!  In my eyes they saw her no better than a dog, and when a dog's hair gets too shaggy you just cut it.  She is a human being who deserves to be treated as such.  Well I wrote a letter to the hospital and heard nothing. 
A month ago she ended up in hospital again.  Guess what, her hair was cut again!!!   Livid, livid.  This time though the head of medicine had called me to complain about something and I took the opportunity to also voice my complaint about her hair being cut. 
Today I heard the results of my concerns.  Two staff at the hospital were involved and they thought she should have her hair cut so they did it.  They have since been spoken to and it is now being dealt with in human resources.  Plus it was brought up at the staff meeting.  Now my intent wasn't to get people into trouble but really to change their mindset and acknowledge that this is a human being and should be treated with some dignity and respect.  So to find out that this will never happen again is my miracle for the day!

1 comment:

  1. I remember you telling me this story and it outraged me. It outrages me that it would happen again! I'm so glad that you were able to make a difference!

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