Attending the Miracle™

Father and Son

"Attending the Miracle" is a worldwide community of people and families who live with disabling conditions. Attending the Miracle is a positive resource, a focal point, and a forum. It is a powerful way for families and professionals to find inspiration and information; a network of people seeking recognition through expression of their extraordinary world views.

Job Opening:


Dwellness™

"Dwell in Wellness."

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Dwellness™ is a support system that facilitates caregiving success for Habilitation Personal Care Attendants (HPCAs) and others who care for patients in need of personal and medical care at home. It brings every home healthcare task into the HPCA’s hands with finely granular descriptions of all personal and medical responsibilities as part of a comprehensive, individualized care process. Many of these tasks might be new to a PCA who trains to become an HPCA.

Dwellness offers a comfortable process for existing caregivers to provide details of the patient's care. With these data, Dwellness customizes, fully explains, and clearly illustrates the entire range of daily routines for accessibility, personal security, and clinical transparency at home. Dwellness helps provide for mutual well-being and growth of the patient and all caregivers.

Dwellness helps answer the home nursing shortage by equipping a traditional PCA to become an HPCA and perform essential medical procedures coordinated with personal cares for the patient at home.

"Once I find a solution to my problem, then I can offer a solution to others with similar needs."

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Background:
My son is 23 years old and was born with a very rare, neuromuscular degenerative disease. He requires 24-hour awake care. He is an amazing person who is filled with a passion for life, music, spirituality, and personal involvement with people and activities. The quality of his personal life and medical care at home requires staff who have patience, a love of life, intellectual curiosity, creative problem-solving, personal awareness, and a knack for essential medical cares and clinical data.

Care Duties – highlights Effective HPCA Qualities…
  • Feed and hydrate through G-tube
  • Dispense and administer medications via G-tube
  • Give small sips of water and small tastes of certain foods
  • Encourage play and social communication
  • Assist exercise on certain equipment
  • Perform home physical therapy and occupational therapy
  • Perform standing and walking assistance
  • Transfer into and out of chairs and bed
  • Tend to bed comfort, safety, and mobility during sleep
  • Use BiPAP while asleep
  • Care for G-tube balloon, changing, and venting
  • Perform various types of suctioning when needed
  • Use nebulizer when awake and asleep
  • Administer Intrapulmonary Percussive Ventilation (IPV)
  • Toileting, showering, and grooming
  • Use pulse oximeter and blood pressure cuff
  • Care for the healthy home environment
  • Organize and monitor supplies
  • Patience
  • Reliability
  • Focus
  • Experience with caregiving
  • Intellectual curiosity
  • Fun-loving nature
  • Precision work
  • Talented learning
  • Upbeat, even with occasional challenges
  • Patience
  • Physical abilities
  • Clear written communication
  • Knowledge of child development
  • Powers of observation
  • Emotional intelligence
  • Analytic thinking
  • Flexibility
  • Comfortable with medical terminology
  • Basic knowledge of medical procedures
  • Patience
  • Music appreciation

Minimum $17/hr plus benefits.
Flexible hours. Paid training. Non-smoking, healthy home environment.
(Oh, and free gourmet coffee! ;)

Apply now:

Philip Agustin Gonzales
Philip@AttendingTheMiracle.com

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Attending the Miracle

Image of Hot Springs

Life may feel like a disaster sometimes; we seem stuck spiritually between the ancient times of miracles and the present, when it takes every ounce of effort to overcome adversity. We look at the time of miracles with doubt. We try to explain and rationalize miracles into an historical sense. What happened to the time when a holy man could just say the word and solve our problems? That may be our view of ancient miracles, like Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead... but is that all it took?

By Attending the Miracle, we can learn that miracles have always been a process that must involve us. Miracles are not magic tricks. Miracles take time and require great human effort, sometimes deep suffering, often a dizzying sense of confusion. In fact, there seem to be no miracles ever performed without pure human passion and hard labor. Most miracles are beyond what feels possible — certainly beyond what feels comfortable. Miracles require Profound Attention, a state of mind that we learn in the workshop titled "Light and Gravity". You must Attend the Miracle for your Miracle to become real. Immersed in doubt, fear, discomfort, pain, confusion, or ecstasy, you can still live passionately, intelligently, and generously by learning to Attend the Miracle that is in you and all around you.

"Attending the Miracle" offers a sequence of workshops, a network, and a forum for open communication that can help improve the lives of individuals and families, whatever share of worldly suffering and joy they may claim as their own.

Attending the Miracle

Attend your miracle. By attending the miracle, you are entering a world of extraordinary viewpoints; a world of developmental disability, medical disabilities, the blind and issues of blindness, vision rehabilitation, advocacy and the lives of powerful advocates. Very important social service information can be found at ARC, which is an organization that advocates on behalf of people with mental retardation. The information might include county services, case management, medicaid, tefra, assistance, welfare, child development, infant issues, crisis management, and pediatric services. Other groups work with mental illness, crisis, family sociology, cancer, cerebral palsy, behavior and behavioral health. They offer workshops, retreats, information, and support groups. The support that a family needs might include consulting, counseling, referral, resources, special education for special needs, autism, asperger syndrome (aka: aspergers or asperger's), birth defects, injury or trauma (including traumatic brain injury). The psychology of families in emergency medical situations requires early intervention and clear medical information; often psychological counseling is helpful. Physicians, doctors, nurses, and surgeons should be responsible for taking the time to consult adequately, so the family feels comforted, especially in crises that might require surgery, anesthesia, entering an operating suite, possible birth defects or natal syndromes, hydrocephalus, neurology, nerve issues, and the brain in general. Of course, this includes injury, accident, or extended hospital stays. Especially confusing is the world of the ICU, PICU, NICU, or intensive care of any kind. The nurse and nursing staff are often most directly in touch with the patient and family. Questions about medicine, drugs, treatment, how to recover, patient recovery, the operation, insurance, complimentary healing, the nature of a person's ability to heal, alternative medicine, and other issues can be addressed by different staff in the hospital. It is good for families to consider attending special conferences and workshops. It is important to understand the difference between a childrens hospital and a general care hospital. The medicine that is practiced in a children's hospital is geared specifically toward pediatric care. A child hospital deals with pediatrics, but also in most major metropolitan areas, has many resources for helping the entire family succeed and recover. The care of a sick child in a pediatric clinic by a primary care doctor is different from the care of an adult. The childrens medical facility will be child specialized. The pediatric physician with a pediatric specialty must be board certified in pediatric medicine. Finally, the stages of grief, anticipation, venting, loss, and worry are most difficult for the caregiver or caregivers. Caregiving is a very challenging task, but is ultimately driven by unconditional love. Care giving must be free of blame and guilt, but some emotional turmoil is unavoidable in such an intense life struggle. Support is critical, whether it is for child or elder care. Eldercare has many resources that are separate from child care. Involvement with health care policy, politics, and social justice is a personal decision that a family can make. Over all, it is a bittersweet journey, dealing with chronic illness.