To My Nurses ….a poem about elder care and dementia

** this poem is written from the point of view of a nursing home resident as I have observed that they feel from my many years of working and volunteering  in nursing homes

TO MY NURSES…

Just because I am old

Does not mean I should be discarded…

I was young like you once

Full of life and very big hearted

I raises my babies,  just like you do

I loved my husband and drove a car

I had a beautiful house 

that I took care of with love

I baked Christmas cookies

and knitted my grandchildren gloves.

I bet you don’t know,  but I worked really hard…

I struggled and fought for my family

I felt things very deeply and cared very much

I had family and friends whose lives that I touched…

I once was important and had a real life

Just like you do… and you never think 

That your life will pass away just like mine did

You’ll end up with nothing you worked for, in the end

You’ll lose your driver’s license 

and your favorite car too

You’ll lose your independence

and people’s respect …

You’ll watch your spouse die and miss him forever

You’ll dread the phone ringing

because more and more family dies

But you might keep going, on with your life

Even though there is nothing left that matters…

You will not understand why God makes you stay

and does not take you home 

to heaven 

to be with your loved ones…

The only people you will have to talk to at all

will be the nurses in the nursing home 

and the patients that do not remember your name…

So, please have compassion for me and be patient

Because someday it could be you in my place

All the power you feel now 

and the things that you love

and the ability to make choices about your day

Could be taken away, never to be seen again

and the life that you once thought was yours

will become a sad memory

that no one wants to listen to…

Not even the nurses that will take care of you

To My Nurses …..( from the point of view of a very old person)

** this poem is written from the point of view of a nursing home resident as I have observed that they feel from my many years of working and volunteering  in nursing homes””

TO MY NURSES…

Just because I am old

Does not mean I should be discarded

I was young like you once

Full of life and very big hearted

I raises my babies , just like you are

I loved my husband and drove a car

I had a beautiful house 

that I took care of with love

I baked Christmas cookies

and knitted my grandchildren gloves

I bet you don’t know but I worked really hard

I struggled and fought for my family

I felt things very deeply and cared very much

I had family and friends whose lives that I touched

I once was important and had a real life

Just like you do and you never think 

That your life will pass away just like mine did

You’ll end up with nothing you worked for, in the end

You’ll lose your driver’s license 

and your favorite car too

You’ll lose your independence

and people’s respect 

You’ll watch your spouse die and miss him forever

You’ll dread the phone ringing

because more and more family dies

But you might keep going, on with your life

Even thought there is nothing left that matters

You will not understand why God makes you stay

and does not take you home 

to heaven 

to be with your loved ones

The only people you will have to talk to at all

will be the nurses in the nursing home 

and the patients that do not remember your name

So, please have compassion for me and be patient

Because someday it could be you in my place

All the power you feel now 

and the things that you love

and the ability to make choices about your day

Could be taken away , never to be seen again

and the life that you once thought was yours…

will become a sad memory that no one wants to listen to

Including the nurses that will take care of you

Lack of Compassion for Depressed Nursing Home Residents

Something happened at work that really offended and upset me. It is so disgusting that nurses, doctors and other people in the health field are so insensitive and uneducated about mental illness. Health care should be about the whole person and not just their physical body.

We have a resident that lives in this particular facility who suffers from moderate to severe depression , that fluctuates from time to time. Sometimes she is very depressed. When she is in  that downward spiral , she tends to stay in bed. She will still eat if food is brought to her room, but  she does not want to go out to the big dining room and interact with people.

Being an introverted person myself, I can attest to the fact that it is very traumatic, triggering, and extremely anxiety provoking to have to be in a room full of people when you are is a state of depression. You simply cannot do it.

Forcing yourself to go out amongst people who will not understand your mood, is not a good thing to do to your brain. All those people having small talk and asking you “how are you” is like a torture chamber.

So, this sweet little old lady was in a very depressed state today. We will call her Nora. So, i went in to visit Nora at 4pm, when I began my shift.   I could see that she still had her pajamas on and had not been out of bed all day. This is a clear sign that she had spiraled down into a depression state.

She said that she did not feel well and that she did not feel up to coming out to the big room for dinner. I went over the dinner menu with her and together we decided that she would eat scrambled eggs and toast in her room. I then left the room to place her order with the kitchen and requested a tray be brought to her room. The kitchen was no problem.

Then I went back to Nora’s room to let her know that the tray had been ordered. As I opened the door to the room, I saw that my supervisor (the charge nurse) was in the room, speaking with Nora. The supervisor said to me that Nora would have to have a “Sick Tray”.

I learned today that  Sick Tray is a tray that they give to people who have a stomach virus and are too sick to eat a real meal. It is to keep them from vomiting up all of their dinner. You know when you have a tummy sickness, you don’t want to eat .

The Sick Tray consists of hot tea, gingerale  jello, and toast . It is not something that you are supposed to force on someone. It is mainly to make sure that they have something offered to them, even if they say they do not want to eat at all. What it is not , is something to be used to withhold food from someone.

Yes, that is what I said. Withhold food! So sick, isn’t  it ??

This nurse said to me the following, “Nora is not sick. She does this all the time. She is JUST depressed. She is saying she is sick but she is not.  If she is going to stay in bed sick then she gets a Sick Tray.”

I asked her if there was any physical reason Nora could not have the scrambled eggs and toast that she wanted.

The nurse said “NO. But she does this all the time that she refuses to get out of bed. If she is going to fake being sick just because she does not feel like coming out, then she can just have a Sick Tray”

This is punishment. This is a clear punishment of someone because they have a mental health issue. This punishment is unfair and will cause the depression to get worse. Poor Nora was hungry and did want to to eat. She asked for the eggs and there was absolutely no reason she could not have them.

The supervisor was so disgusted by Nora’s continued pattern of depression ans self isolation that she decided to punish her by actually making her go hungry.

I was so upset and angry but there was nothing I could do. i did go back in to the room late in the shift. I won’t say weather ot not I snuck her in a snack. What is your guess? (wink, wink )

But what if I had not been there? This will happen again and again. To make her go hungry and to treat her with such disrespect, is detrimental to her mental health. It further isolates her.

She was willing to have me visit her in the room. The right thing to do would have been to bring her whatever she wanted from te kitchen and for me to sit with her while she ate. Then I could spend some time to talk with her about how she was feeling and she would have at least had a dinner she enjoyed.

What else can I say? I have hundreds of stories like this. I have collected them for 5 years. There is little or o compassion for people with mental illness in these facilities.

There are a lot of elderly people in nursing homes that have severe depression due to the many losses they have experienced. They have lost their home, their spouse, their car, their drivers license, their pets and many of their friends and family have passed away.

it is a very hard time of life and many people end up depressed and isolated, when they become old This is a horrible failure of the health care system and a lack of compassion from health care workers.

More awareness and re-training of the nurses is needed, if people are going to have lives worth living in the long term care facilities.

Blessings,

Annie

Old and Tired at 101 years old

I had a conversation with a man that is 101 years old. The other workers told me to stay with him for a while because they thought he had become confused and forgetful. They thought he would not be safe alone in is room.

So, I sat with him and asked him what was up. He told me.

He said, “I am old.”

I said, “How old are you?”

He said, “I was born in March of 1913.”

“You are 101 years old? Wow, that is really neat.” I said

“I am old.” he said ” I am old and tired. They all think I am confused because I say that. But I am old and I am tired. I don’t understand why I am still here.”

He continued on “The same thing happened to my mother. She lived to be over 100. She was not happy about it. She was old ad tired.”

“I understand,” I said. “You are old and tired and everything is hard for you. Your family and friends are all in heaven and you don’t know why you are still here.”

“That’s right,” he said.

It is strange to me that people think someone is confused when they say they no longer want to be here on the earth.

Sometimes people are old and tired and they are just done. That is how they feel. They are not confused about it. They are only wondering when they will die and why they are still here when everyone they love has passed on.

They miss their spouse and their children who have long since passed away. It is not easy to be 101 years old.

He is not forgetful or disoriented at all. he is not confused. he knows exactly how he feels and no one wants to listen to it.

Feeling like you want to die is unacceptable. It is not proper therefor the person must be confused or have dementia.

I spoke with this man for 20 minutes and he had no signs of dementia. His memory is better than mine is.

Afterwards I told the supervisor that he was depressed. She said “he is forgetful and confused.”

There is a difference between forgetful and disoriented and being depressed. Most people don’t expect old people to feel depressed.

They think they are too old to have anything going on with them except dementia and forgetfulness.

Sometimes people feel the way they feel, even if it doesn’t fit into people’s comfort zone.

I was glad they called me to sit with him. He was honest and forthcoming with me because I was willing to listen without judgement.

Whenever someone says they don’t want to live, people tell them “You don’t mean that”. But they do. People don’t say things like that if they don’t really feel that way.

At least someone listened and believed him. It isn’t much but it was the least I could do.

Namaste,
Annie

How Stella and Bob Still Stayed Close During Bob’s Late Stage Dementia – Alzheimer’s Disease / A True story of How Love Endures

Stella and Bob had been married for 63 years when I met them. I was the home health aide for Bob.

His care had become too much for Stella to do alone. It was too difficult physically, mentally and emotionally for her.

Bob had late stage Alzheimer’s Disease, Dementia, and he could no longer walk, use the bathroom, feed himself, or communicate well.

Stella felt depressed a lot of the time. Their relationship was no longer the same. He could not communicate with her like he used to. He could not comfort her or help her anymore.

She missed him, the way he used to be. He was still there in body, but part of him was gone and still continuing to get worse. She was losing him bit by bit every day.

Bob himself was depressed and angry a lot of the time. His anger was mostly directed toward the home health aides but sometimes spilled over onto Stella.

Bob had late stage dementia and he could no longer walk, use the bathroom, feed himself, or communicate well.

Stella loved Bob very much. She wanted to understand him even when he could not say what he needed or wanted. She would lean over him in the bed, and ask him what he needed. She would hold his hands and stroke his head to calm him.

He would get so frustrated that he could not put his words together but she spoke to him with kindness, in a calm tone of voice.

In the evenings, I would help her clean him and out him in his pajamas. They had 2 twin beds because he had to be in a hospital bed.

The beds were apart during the day, in order for the aides to have access to Bob, to perform care that was required.

At bedtime, Stella would help me to push the two beds together. She asked me to push them as close together as I could, so that they were touching.

She said, “He is my husband. I want him next to me in the bed. I want to be able to reach over and touch him. ”

She explained to me that during the nights, he would wake up and call out because he was afraid. He was disoriented and did not understand where he was or what was going to happen to him.

“I always hear him when he awakens, and I reach over and touch him to comfort him. I want to be close enough to him at night to be able to do that.”

So, every night , I pushed the beds together.

There is more to health care than just caring for the physical needs of the patient. There are emotional and mental needs of the patient and the family that are equally important.

*Note – The facts in this story are true. The names were changed to protect the privacy of Stella and Bob. Stella was 88 at the time of my association with her. Bob was 92.*

Our Capacity for Love

I work with dementia patients for my job. I would like to share this touching story with you that happened last year.

I have an old woman with dementia in the unit that has severe disorientation of time and place. I will refer to her here as Anna Rosemary.

Anna Rosemary is a sweet lady. She cannot put her words together to make any sentences that make sense. She expresses emotion clearly through facial expression, gestures and the volume and tone of her voice.

If she is sad then she cries. If something amuses her, she laughs. When she sees me she always smiles.

Sometimes when i get to work she looks at me and says “thank God.” which means I have not seen you around, I am glad to see you back.

I stopped to talk with her one night. She likes to talk back and forth. She listens and she responds but her words do not come out the way she wants.

She says to me “I feel like I am cuckoo.” I was surprised at this because it had not occurred to me that she was aware that there was something wrong with her brain.

I repeated it back to her to make sure I had understood her. I said “Anna Rosemary. do you feel like you are cuckoo?”

She said “Yes. I am trying to figure myself out.” I was amazed at the clarity of this sentence. I must have taken a huge amount of effort for her to force her brain to put that sentence together. That shows how important it is for people to communicate their feelings to another person.

I gave her a hug and told her that her brain was being a bit cuckoo and I did not know why. I told her that I still knew her and loved her. I could still understand how she was feeling.

I told her that I feel a bit cuckoo sometimes too. Something happens with our brain sometimes. But that she was still Anna Rosemary.

She hugged me and said “it is hard” I asked her if she felt it was hard to put her words together. She hugged me tighter.

I said to her, “you still know love. You still have a beautiful heart and know what love is.”

“You don’t have to keep trying so hard right now to put the words together. You are full of love and I love you.”

She and I stood there and I held her and kissed the top of her head.

Anna Rosemary hugged me back, and felt comforted, as did I.

She stopped worrying about putting her words together for a while and took my hand to walk with her into the living room area. We just walked together , holding hands for a while in silence.

Sometimes there is more love in silence than with a lot of talking. If she can still love people and needs to be loved then love itself must transcend the basic functions of the brain.

Love and the need to be loved is more powerful than the rational, cognitive parts of the brain.

Even when most of the brain is not functioning properly, love is still alive and thriving.

The brain is the ruling organ of the body. It controls every function in the body, including language processing and speech.

But even with all of those functions damaged, the capacity for love is in tact. There is something very special about our ability to love.