After visiting Thelma in the nursing home, my husband and I have been having a lot of talks lately about our health, aging, and where we could find ourselves, you know, at the end. It has changed how we treat each other while we’re still continent.
I never thought a nursing home would be all that bad until I visited one. I used to fantasize about sharing my own little room with my pet, and meals prepared for me. Tennis in the afternoon with people who can still get around. Water aerobics in the morning. I was picturing the Four Seasons with a bunch of Jack LaLannes.
It never entered my mind that I could wind up in a holding tank for people who have lost control of their bodily functions and their minds. Hey! I am sometimes very forgetful and I have been known to wet my pants a little when I laugh too hard!
I escorted Thelma to the bathroom and stood with her while she used the john because we had broken a rule that was very clearly explained to me. Only family and hospital staff can move Thelma out of her chair. If she gets up from her wheelchair an alarm will sound and staff will come running.
I tried to make the noise stop with the weight of my coat and a Kleenex box, the only things within reach, while I supported Thelma with my other arm. Once she steadied herself on the toilet, I ran out to the chair to find the switch to turn off the alarm to no avail.
I helped Thelma pull up her adult diaper while making a mental note to begin doing kegels every day. I asked if she wanted me to change it. She said it was fine. It didn’t look fine. Ten repetitions of one hundred kegels. Starting tomorrow.
The alarm in her wheelchair buzzed continuously while she was in the bathroom. I tried to hurry her so we wouldn’t get in trouble but it was too late. If she hadn’t insisted on washing her hands I could have returned her to her chair without her daughter-in-law barging in and scolding us. Later, when I wheeled her down the hallway for something to do, all the aides shook their heads at me. Bad, Amy! Bad!
Shiny waxed linoleum floors that echo. Nagging fluorescent lights. People in wheelchairs, asleep in the hallway. The horrible beeping and buzzing sound of alarms meant to protect everyone’s ass. This is not how I plan to live out my life.
My friend, Nancy, is an emergency room nurse at a busy hospital on Long Island. She told me the story of having to juggle three patients. First, she had to put an IV in an 85-year old woman’s arm. Then she had to check on a bleeding patient’s stitches in the next room. Third, she had to cast a broken leg.
She finally found a vein in the 85-year old, and ran to help the other two patients. When she returned to transfer the 85-year old to a floor, she found that the old woman had pulled out her IV.
“What did you do that for?!!” Nancy scolded her.
“If you were 85 you’d pull it out, too,” she said in a rusty, tired voice.
“That’s just it! I’m not going to be 85!” Nancy spat back, exacerbated.
The old woman pointed a crooked, wrinkled hand at Nancy and croaked, “Sometiiiiimes….you don’t have a choice.”
I realize that. I realize I don’t get to choose how I’m going to age or die. But I like to make plans to make me feel better.
“When the time comes, Skye, I’m going to rent a hang glider and purposely crash it.”
“What if it doesn’t kill you and you only break your neck?”
“Hadn’t thought of that. What’s more dangerous than hang gliding?”
“Skydiving. You’re guaranteed to hit the ground a little harder. But that’s scary.”
“Eh. I could do it, compared to the alternative. I’d probably have a heart attack on the way down.”
“You’d rather go that way? They have lethal injection in Oregon now.”
I don’t know how he knows these things but the thought of lethal injection sounds so freaky. I back off that idea and rethink my plan.
“Do you think they’d put us in the same room? Are there co-ed rooms at nursing homes?” I ask this, aware of the fact that this is the first time I’ve ever imagined us together that long. I know it sounds harsh, but I always figured he’d go before me, with how fast he rides his motorcycle, and how far he drives to work everyday. A crosswind blows precipitation across Route 33, the road he takes to work every day, making it one, long bumper-to-bumper strip of black ice in the winter months.
Before we got married, when all Skye’s motorcycle purchases were bought from sad grooms and relieved brides, I decided I would not be one of those wives who says, “Hey, that thing you love that makes you feel so good? Get rid of it. It’s not going to work with my long-term plan to have an intact family til the day I die.”
However, I’m not a freedom extremist. I’m definitely not going to say, “That job you go to everyday that gives us this lifestyle? Quit it. It’s sucking your soul and that commute is a plank walk.” I have selfishly grown accustomed to a roof over my head and the house to myself all day while he’s out there earning a living.
I told Skye, “There is nothing like peering into each patient’s room at a nursing home to make you realize, ‘Holy, mutha! That could be my future!’”
It was a wake-up call. “We better start that bucket list now, Skye. We better start living!”
In the morning when I woke up and I’d had more time to think about our retirement – that suddenly went from motorcycle rides up Highway 1 and trips to countries we haven’t seen, to the harsh reality of living out our last years in a hospital bed, unable to go to the bathroom independently – I had a new plan for living.
“We need to go on more motorcycle rides this summer,” I announced to Skye when he woke up.
“Okay. Why is that?”
“Because we love them.”
I was up before Skye, made coffee for myself while he slept in. When he awoke, I jumped up to make coffee for him, even though he was on his way to make it himself.
“You take your delicate system over there and I’ll make you some coffee while I still can. I’m going to spoil you without worrying about how you’re going to turn out.”
“Too late. I’m already bad. And I’m all grown up so there’s no fixing it,” he said. And then he felt me up.
There is definitely no sex going on at the nursing home. I’m pretty sure we won’t wind up there. What was I thinking?
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Hi Amy -
I have enjoyed reading your musings and this one in particular struck a cord because I had to commit my 60 year old father to a nursing home over the summer and I came home with the same exact thoughts! You have written them out so eloquently……..the state of our nursing homes is deplorable. I am definitely not planning to be a resident.
Have a happy New Year.
Laurie
P.S. – We are both CSR grads in Columbus, OH. Small world! I keep in contact with MaryAlice Molgard (I was a comm major myself & she was my work study professor) and heard you were there recently to speak. Cool!
Ahhhhh! This is so sad! But really great, thoughtful writing, as usual. I’m really glad you visited Thelma, too. I bet you made her so happy. xoxo.
WHAT?
I thought nursing homes were for baby’s?
Nope. Those are nurseries. Close!
food for thought Amy..
all my family members died in their 60s so i did not think beyound that…
i am following you via networked blogs and fans page facebook…..hope you will return the favor
Making a bucket list is actually on my list of things to do. Shit. I have really been out of the loop. I am going to make this list as my before New Year’s Resolution and then I am going to start it after the baby is born.
I do a millon kegels a day and have for so long i hope it actually helps! It helped with having babies so it must do something!
While I do not normally think of being fabulously wealthy as neccessary I think it really helps as you get older. Nursing homes terrify me! I need for my kids to love me so much they want me with them or GOBS of money to pay for someone to take care of me in my spa like home until I croak.
Lethal injection is freaky. I am with you.
Great Post!
Yea! What if you change your mind and it’s too late! Do they give you a pre-lethal injection placebo to double check?
Amy, I hope you dont mind but i am going to comment on your blog with a blog of my own after dinner if i can get my thoughts rolling again….you’ve once again gotten my mind rolling…Thanks
Well, I can’t wait to read it, Jeanette. You have a way with words and telling a story. I love it.
Amy, my Mother & Step Father were both Terrified of “THE BACK HALL”, at the Margaretville Hospital. Thank God, neither of them had to be there. The older they got, the harder it was to get them to go to even visit an old friend….I think they thought that we were going to trick them, once we got them back there!
I may have the same fear…at 66, I bought another company, and work 12-16 hours a day, some weeks 6-7 days! I know those damn guys in those white coats are right around the corner….just waiting for me to slow down! Put a side car on that Harley Lori, I wanna go for a ride too!
It is a terrifying prospect, “THE BACK HALL”. I didn’t even know there WAS a back hall, that’s how terrifying it was. It was Hotel California. You can check in but you can’t check out. You’ll make it beyond 66, but if anything happens we’ll come pick your old ass up in the sidecar and head for Route 66, with “Take it to the Limit” cranked up on our headsets.
Growing up my mother worked as the Activities Director for a nursing home. For the mobile members she worked with there was life and joy and beauty. When I spent time with that group I found myself thinking a nursing home was one long vacation.
It was the few times I strolled through the intensive care unit that shocked my senses into what it truly meant to sign up for a room in a nursing home. No matter if you start out with the active group, in all reality you are buying that room in intensive care in advance. That always terrified me.
It’s terrible sometimes to think of that world ahead. I understand your new found quest for living. I always drove a little faster, and laughed a little louder once I left my mothers nursing home…
Definitely
Nursing home living is being transformed in places where the idea of person vs. alphanurmeric notation fits. The only way nursing homes work for peace of mind with the resident and family is to do just what Amy talked about – go visit…be proactive…give a crap…whatever your descriptive moniker…and it really makes a difference when nursing aides actually develop caring relationships with the ones they care for (so the family can go about their so very busier and busier lives).
I see it every day – I work in a nursing home. The residents who have family visiting regularly and have had a relationship with that loved one get the most from the nursing home experience. Hey, it’s hard taking care of someone who can’t care of themselves while you try to live the rest of your life. And until we become a “Soylent Green” society (“soylent green is people”, said Charleton Heston) we can work to expand the positive. We haven’t touched the full potential that the Information Age offers in this arena.
If I had a magic wand, I would go *POOF!* to give a Kindle to every nursing home patient, a weeky massage, and a swim in a pool 3 x week. At least a bathtub with water jets in every room! Come on! I hated not being able to sit in a bathtub with my infant when he almost left this world at ten days old. He contracted a respiratory virus that almost took him. A little back-to-water rejuvenation would have helped him rally a lot sooner. It was awful not being able to give that to him and watching him get limper and limper.
By the way – this was beautifully written and really fucking depressing.
Just make sure you appreciate each day! Give life all ya got.
Oregon: the only state where you can legally take your own life, but you can’t legally pump your own gas.
You’re so full of factoids.
PS. Gloria, you look really hawt in that dress.
Victoria Falls, in Zimbabwe. Never been but my parents (originally South African) rave about it! Book a flight now and don’t forget your bungee chords!
(as for when to buy long term care insurance, I believe any time is a good time, if you have the dough — but investigate options cause I believe savings accts can also work for the same purpose)
This weblog is being featured on Five Star Friday – http://www.fivestarfriday.com/2009/11/five-star-fridays-edition-81.html
I hope you don’t mind me doing kegels while I read this…
Not at all. I was doing kegels the whole time I wrote this post.
I work at AARP and if there’s one thing I can say it’s age in place! Buy some long term care insurance (to pay for folks to come by and care for you as neded) and stay at home.
Nursing homes suck. Period.
If that doesn’t work out, then yeah, hangliders, motorcycles, off-roading, dirt-biking, bungee jumping off the Victoria Falls, whatever it takes!
You heard it from an insider, folks! Thanks, Bridget!
I want to die doing what I love but that’s not going to keep me from doing what I love now. Where do you suggest I bungee jump again? Victorian Falls?? That brings me to my next question. At what age do I buy the long-term care insurance?
Horribly, one way that nursing homes trim cost and adult-diaper-manufacturers make sales is by using fewer and fewer of the diapers. The manufacturers sell them saying that you can change the diapers only 2 or 3 times a day and still meet regulations. TMI, for sure.
Along with better education, universal healthcare and a sensible tax code, we really need to find a better way to deal with the elderly before they become us. It costs much less to keep someone in their own home with adequate support, but funding is much harder to arrange.
One day soon, hopefully elder care will be so different than what it is now, we’ll look back and compare present day care to Romanian orphanages. Nursing home patients are under touched and deprived of real conversation. The elderly, are not the “allergy generation”. There should be dogs roaming the facility and sleeping with the patients. Hell, I need a therapy dog to make it through a big box store without freaking out. I can’t imagine living in that sterile environment without a furry little friend.
PS. Dear Brenda, don’t be such a downer. *wink*
…I’d visit you; hell, I’d probably be in the adjoining room. And, damn it, I’m bringing my Harley.
Do you want to go for a ride after our morning water aerobics in our string bikinis? Take the Harley down to the beach and walk barefoot on hot sand? Between the two of us we’d probably be able to remember where you parked the Harley.
We thought that nursing home was good for my grandmother too. But when we visited her, we were greatly shocked. She was always tied to her wheelchair and cannot walk around on her own. In the end after one month, she refused to walk even when we were there with her. We were very sad about making her went through all that and we decided to move her home instead. We are just glad that she is home now and can walk freely around the house.
Morning Amy! Definetley time to rethink retirement! So glad that Thelma is doing ok! One more thing to be thankful for!