Old folks are still folks like us.... even when they don’t look it Mar 08 '07    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Books Irene Hunt - The Lottery Rose: A Novel From $6 John Steinbeck - East Of Eden From $7 The Bottom Line Why do we pay more attention of the passing stranger's dog than to the forgotten old folks in nursing homes? Where will you be when you are old and useless? That seems such a strange question to ask a 32 years old person. I have asked myself that many times before, however. It’s something that happens when you work in healthcare. See, I had this bright idea that working in a nursing home at night while going to college full-time during the day was a good way to both keep myself out of troubles and funding my own college education in the process (not to mention that the job would look good on my resume as a pre-med/chemistry major). It worked out well at first while I was still fresh enough to absorb weeks of 20 or fewer hours of sleep and still staying alert enough to take in what was being taught in class. And working the grave-yard shift (11PM-7AM) meant that the patients I had to work with were in bed most of the time and wouldn’t interact with me much until I have to wake them up and get them ready for the day at 5AM (isn’t that barbaric how we treat the old nursing home residents? Get up at 5 and wait sitting up in that cold wheelchair of yours for 2 hrs before any breakfast is served). All honeymoons end at some point, and I became aware that those bodies lying in bed that I had to check every 2 hrs were actually people who looked at least halfway normal during the day (if the nursing staff, which I was a part of, did our job properly). And worse yet, they were just as normal as my friends and I are once... and in so many decades many of the people I know (and god forbids, me myself) would be in their place. There were only a few people I have worked with who realized this from the first moment they started working in nursing. Most others learn it on the job... and some never learned it at all and keep on treating the patients in their care as bodies that are to be turned and cleaned every few hours. Unfortunately, the last type tend to be the ones who hang around in nursing the longest, because their conscience never causes them to overwork in order to be humane, over-extending themselves and burning out from the field. I was the 2nd type who learned on the job and tried to both be humane enough to my charges in small ways like actually talking with them instead of at them, or letting them make some decisions like which dress to wear or whether or not to agree to have their diaper changed voluntarily (hey, when people are roused from sleep every 2 hours, they aren’t always sensible) while also getting all my chores done to satisfy my employer, and more importantly, my co-workers. I made it a point to get all the folks assigned to me (usually 11 patients and sometimes more if we were short on staff) up at a slow enough pace for them to not feel rushed to be ready for breakfast even if I had to clock out at 7AM and then returned to the floor for an extra half an hour on my own time to complete all I was supposed to do so that the ‘day shift’ wouldn't be rightfully mad at me. Eventually and inevitably I over-extended. It was horrible... I started hearing the ‘call-light’ signal that rings whenever a patient needs assistance going off in my ears everywhere at all hours of the day. It was hard staying awake during classes and retaining my lessons. After a semester or so of that, I couldn’t even tell when one day stopped and another began, it was like living in this long never-ending day that covered the whole year. Absurdly enough, quitting was not an easy thing to do since I was now feeling obligated to those patients. Maybe it was true and maybe it wasn’t, but I had this impression that others didn’t take as good a care of the patients as I was, and so missing work meant subjecting them to people who would treat them worse than I would. Very self-absorb of me, I know. After a few months of sleep deprivation, I wasn’t thinking straight much of the time myself. Don’t believe those beautiful TV ads where you see nursing home patients looking all well groomed and surrounded by friendly and caring staff. Maybe a few places like that exist but they wouldn't be affordable to the majority of us. Living in a nursing home is usually not a pleasant experience. There are some caring nursing staff, to be sure, but they tend to be on the day shift (where the patients are mostly awake and it is easier to see them as another person), and day shift are only (the visible to visitors) half of the staff. Dehumanization of sleeping bodies is a common psychological disease of the night. I worked in 4 different hospices and nursing homes during my college years (2 yrs in St Joseph and 2 yrs in St Louis, Missouri), and abuse of these helpless patients (maybe I should call them residents, ay?) happened everywhere. Abuse isn’t always something as blatant as beating or starving someone. Sometimes they are seemingly innocent things like letting an incontinent patient sleep in a bed soaked with his own discharge all night because the nursing staff has better thing to do (like taking the 3rd smoking break of the night) than to bother with someone who will probably have another go at 'number 1' before the 4AM bed-check comes around. Lack of action where one is needed is abuse in my book when the well being of another person is on the line. But many people I’ve worked with can get around that by not being around to notice that an action is needed in the first place. Should I have reported all of them and get them disciplined by management (if that ever happens)? Ideally, perhaps so.... but night-shift was always short. There was never even a single week during the 4 years I did the work that we had 5 nights in a row with full staff coming in to work. And with full staff, I would be charged with caring for 7-15 patients by myself. I have had to cover 25 patients by myself a few times when more than 2 nursing staff called in. I was fortunate enough that none of the patients in my charge went falling and breaking some bones in their room on those nights. Nursing is such a demanding job that it suffers from high turn-over rate. And if you can’t fill the staff with well qualified people, then you have to fill them with not so well qualified ones, regardless of what the rules and regulations say. In Missouri there was a law against hiring people with criminal record for nursing jobs, but all but 1 of the 4 nursing facilities I worked in hired me on the spot when I went in to fill out application form. The 4th one only waited 2 days. I like to work with other people with high work ethics, but when it comes down to either having another set of hands to help or none at all.... One can only do so much before going either completely nuts or becoming psychologically harden into indifference. And neither sounded very healthy to me. So why am I posting this long rambling just when there are already too many reviews for you to read to begin with? Today is an anniversary of the first time I touched a freshly dead body... I didn’t even like the guy but he smiled at me the day before he died and asked if I wanted a cookie (he didn’t realized that what he was holding out was actually his own toothbrush... but with the luxury of dementia, the thing resembled a cookie to him and I appreciated the sharing spirit). He died from a heart attack during the night, and I had to clean him up and made him look presentable to the family members. One does get used to touching a dead body after some practice, but the first one is always unsettling and the feeling sticks with you somewhat. It’s been a few years since I last set foot in a nursing home (medical technologists like me stay in the lab and talk to our test tubes and agar dishes, the phlebotomists are the ones that get to go out collecting blood from real people for testing). Maybe I have been enjoying the good life away from nursing too much... But I shall go visit one today. Find the lonely looking ones who are stuck in bed and so out of touch with the world of the living that they don’t have much to say, and I’ll just sit there and keep them company for a while. I wouldn’t even mind if they start rambling out about the families that never come and visit or reminiscing of their own ‘youthful days’ of long ago (mind, some people think they are saying one thing while in reality what comes out of their mouth is really intelligible ‘yak, yak’ sounds. In which case I can always just go along and nod to let them know I was hearing something). You won’t believe how much better some of the nursing home residents’ day become to them if someone they don’t even know would choose to spend 10 minutes sitting with them and listening to them yak-yakking as if they are someone worth paying attention to. It would only cost me an hour or two, but they are disproportionately grateful that it doesn’t seem a fair trade!! Maybe they won’t even mind if I play a Bellini opera on their stereo (though I might mind if they start singing along... Oh well, that might just make me appreciate people who can actually sing better, right?). Who knows, maybe I’ll run into some old opera singers there... they are people who get old, too, after all. Anyhow, if you are in a charitable mood and looking for low-investment ways of doing good (aside from donating blood), please consider visiting nursing home/ hospice residents. So little effort is required and so big a difference you can make in those lonely souls’ day. You may see nursing staff do it, but really, don’t baby-talk with these old folks. They aren’t mentally degenerated into babyhood just because they're old (the ones with spina-bifida can usually understand you fine, and the demented ones don’t understand baby-talk any more than they do normal talk). If you bring any sweets, better make sure they are safe for diabetics to eat, though... And check the chairs before you sit on them. Most of the time they are clean and innocent enough, but sometimes they aren’t. I’m not a religious person, but I do think goodwill has a way of getting around and returning to its giver. Maybe one day you will find yourself as a nursing home resident, too. Then hopefully someone will come and visit when those you expected to don’t.

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