Sunday, March 27, 2005
The Workday, pt. 1
It has been nearly two weeks since BW passed away, his bed sanitized and filled by a guy bigger than me, but angry about having to be here. For the most part, he’s an okay guy, but since he is able to get up to go to the toilet, change the channel on the TV, wash himself in the morning and walk to the dining room, he sees no reason to be at DHC. I try to be congenial to him, for he-like everyone else down 2300-deserves it.
WW is his roommate, and try as hard as I do to keep his spirits up, he’s getting angrier and more aggressive as the days go by. I have seen this type of behavior many times before: it precedes a very painful death.
Where I work can be extremely depressing sometimes, but I go in with the attitude that I would hate to have people come in my room in the middle of the night, or early morning to take my clothes off and throw a diaper on me after putting a wet wash cloth down on my manhood and where the “Good Lord” split me.
I try to prioritize what to do from 6 to 10:30; specifically who to do cares with. Some people don’t care when they get up; others want to get up early; and others have family members that have specifically requested to my unit manager that it be made official on the daily care plan when they want mom or dad up.
I try to get to my first three planned residents done after filling 18 cups with ice water plus 2 honey and nectar thickened waters. But there are the usual interruptions. It usually begins when JL is trying to get to the bathroom, even though he has been classified as a fall risk-which is pretty much the main reason many folks like him are in this place. Old age brings about confusion, dementia, and a deteriorating body that doesn’t want to cooperate with them. JL’s personal and pressure alarm is screeching at high-volume, the alert that there is an old man who is about to have a dangerous accident.
RW is crying and repeatedly saying “help me, help me” and “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” Usually when I enter the room and get her bed light on, she has her hip protectors and her incontinence pad around her ankles, sometimes filled with waste, sometimes not. She lays naked and confused in her bed having a hard time with what life she has left. Her husband David is a very loving and patient man that comes to see her everyday (something that can’t be said for other residents who would love nothing more than their children to give a shit about them and stop by to visit). But every once in a while, when she gets stuck in a rut of words and thought, tries to get out of her Broda chair and gets angry, David buries his face in his hands and sobs. This is not the same woman he married fifty-years ago, and it hurts when another human being you have been through good times and bad with is becoming a mere shadow of what they once were.
RM was a man of the earth: the consummate Wisconsin dairy farmer who, since taking up residence at DHC, has had to sell the farm he worked decades to preserve. His wife J is there to visit everyday and to make sure that we are doing our job right. I like and respect that woman, and make sure that he, like everyone else, is getting the best care that this body and soul of mine can exert. J has had to move into a tiny apartment in town because our illustrious leaders in Washington over the years have made sure that we get screwed when it comes to decent, affordable health care. After having had three consecutive strokes and being hit with Parkinson’s disease, he is spooned twice a day via applesauce the plethora of drugs manufactured by the same soulless bastards that cost him house and livelihood to begin with.
RM has the ability to pick up a spoon with his left arm and bring oatmeal to his mouth, but swallowing it is a whole different matter: as hard as he tries, a lot of it runs down his chin and on the towel covering the clean shirt that I had put on for him a little while ago. He isn’t able to say much-his main source of communication is low-pitched growling-but I know just from looking at him that he is frustrated. The man can’t sit up straight, can’t walk, and can’t move his head so the demands of ADL’s must exhaust him to no end. When not in bed, he sits slumped in his wheelchair watching the world goes by.
FJ slaps. MH babbles. RB sings the Lord’s Prayer in German all day, every day. MA screams and moans, for she gets upset just from being awake. She lies in her bed or in her reclining wheelchair in a contracted fetal position all day.
JW is A&O x3 (alert and oriented to time, place, and events). He, like many of these folks, is a WWII vet, and often tells me about life in America as a soldier, a husband, a father and as an old man. He also has some really good dirty jokes. And funny observations: one day he told me that the incontinence pads we change for him reminded him of a cheap hotel-“…no ballroom.” So why is he here at DHC? Due to a bad course of diabetes, he had to have his right leg amputated below the knee. He’s able to catch himself when he needs to void, but has to roll from one side of his bed to the other as someone else helps him with his bowel movements. He’s uncomfortable talking about it and having to have someone else take care of it for him.
To be continued.