When Nicky Guttridge embarked on a career as a health care assistant, she thought it would be an easy way to enjoy a satisfying career with working hours which could be fitted in with the needs of a family. She soon found that many people look on HCAs as the lowest of the low in the caring world, but she learned that although the work is hard, sometimes unpleasant and not always for the fainthearted, it is also highly rewarding and satisfying. She has written this book to show what it’s really like to care day after day, or night after night, for older people who may have lost the use of their faculties, and who may treat you as their best friend or their greatest threat, and how you can make lifelong friends – as well as a few enemies – along the way.