I appreciate your insight, Crypts, which is wise and balanced. Scheduling some attendants back to back so they cover 24 hours in a row is what I've hoped to do. Right now, I've got two attendants. Plus a prospect or two on the horizon. The one who was here today is kind and companionable to my s.o., talking with him so pleasantly. But he's never worked in a nursing home. His hands on skills are not the greatest, and he's somewhat allergic to going in the kitchen. While I was gone for 3.5 hours, my guy got a container of yogurt. My s.o. is sensitive to what he thinks the attendants want to do and won't ask them to do one bit more than he thinks they really like doing. I have yet to meet one that has any interest in cooking. Frying an egg seems beyond them. I worry, if I'm gone a whole day, he won't be fed enough. These are mature adults who have children and even grandchildren. The VA offered to send out a dietitian to teach them about proper nutrition and meal planning. What did these individuals do when they had kids to feed? They know perfectly well what constitutes a decent meal. Ignorance isn't the problem. They bring very little initiative to their work. The agencies pay these folks less than $10/hour. (We're a low income region.) Now that I control their pay, I raised the wage to $12/hr. Today's attendant I paid $14/hr because he came for a short shift on short notice. I hear the nursing homes are only paying $15/hr. And that's for taking an assignment of 10 - 15 patients per nurse's aid. I need to learn more about leadership and motivating people. I'm not a complete pushover, but I try to avoid alienating or demoralizing anyone who comes here to work.

A big problem is my own fluctuating mood. Today I feel good. Right now I feel great. I'm baking brownies and catching up on housework I neglected when I was depressed. I'm practically hypomanic. A psychiatrist who treated me for 6 years for dysthymia suddenly said to me one day, "I do believe you're bipolar." This was after I had gotten upset with him and very angry. In 6 years a cross word was never exchanged. Under severe stress, when I felt he was minimizing a difficult problem I faced, I spoke very angrily to him. So he pronounced a brand new diagnosis, like he felt he was finally discovering the real me and was astonished at the revelation. I do have severe changes in mood. I wish he had really been interested in helping me, but he terminated treating me. It kind of seemed like his sudden new diagnosis was retaliatory. He was, it seemed, very offended by my getting angry. (Doctors can't just "abandon" patients. His way out was that he knew I had an appointment to get a second opinion from another pdoc.)

Crypts, I don't feel like you're being a downer, at all. I am in a stressful, draining situation. But these extremes of mood have been there since before my current situation.

Cepheid, I appreciate your perspective. Not having had children, I never before had to be responsible for another human being around the clock. I always pitied mothers of very young children because the responsibility is relentless. You can never call in sick - like in a job. His visiting nurse is also encouraging me to consider letting him be placed in a facility. Tough as the current situation is, I don't relish the thought of being alone all the time. It's like I would be trading in one big stress, just to get an alternative big stress. If I could just stay in a decent mood long enough to organize getting the extra help that the VA and Medicaid are happy to pay for, I could make things better for myself. A quadriplegic in this neighborhood is in the same Medicaid program and has organized a good retinue of home attendants. My problem is I don't stay focused on recruiting help long enough to pull together a crew. I keep getting upset and not following through on anything.

I don't mean to challenge every suggestion. I am hearing the posts above. One thing I need to accept is that probably no one is going to come in here and do things exactly as I want them done. But that's not the end of the world. He'll survive, and, if I am willing to delegate work to others who may not do it perfectly, it will afford me a chance to recover. Then, when I return, like today, I'll be nicer to my s.o. And, after missing me for awhile, he'll be nicer too. If me getting some time away means a few things don't get done exactly like I would do them, I could try just accepting that.

Meanwhile I've gotten a bunch of responses from Craig's List, but I don't think I'll just throw caution to the wind and let these applicants come aboard with no careful vetting. That process is work, and I've wanted there to be an easy way to get help. I've been avoiding the effort it takes to recruit. Getting out of bed and getting dressed and staying out of bed would help a lot.