What’s in your future?
I woke up this morning thinking about what nursing homes are going to be like for baby-boomers. (I’m so hoping to die before that happens.)
My first thought was that if I make it to that stage, I would have to live with a bunch of women, since most men die before women. Tight perms and ugly clothes - for the women, not me.
A day in the life of…
Someone will wake you up, get you dressed, and sit you in a wheel chair, speaking directly in your face very loudly. They’ll switch on TV to their favorite program while they make your bed and potty you, slinging a cold wet face cloth over your face, swathing your mouth with Listerine. You’ll sit there or in the lounge waiting to be taken down to breakfast, which will be cold and tasteless, eating with people you wish you’d never met. (It will be a Jean Paul Sarte type of hell.)
Just think - you’ll be living in a home that you pay for some way or another, but you won’t have kitchen rights, you won’t be able to get your own coffee or meals; you certainly won’t be able to smoke or drink, and you will be treated pretty much like a child.
The nursing assistants, who will be working there because they just got out of prison or can’t get a better job, will lean over into your face and shout, “We are having entertainment today!”
“Do we get cookies too?” I’ll ask.
“Yes honey! Cookies and juice!” She screams back.
“What’s the entertainment?” I mutter as she walks away.
Turning, she quips, “It’s Beatles day! The High School band is coming and they are going to have a Beatles concert! Yeah, yeah, yeah!”
“They’ll butcher it!” I mumble.
Then all the losers who are in band come into the Home, doing an “Up-With People” routine, grabbing our hands and waving them in the air like we just don’t care, torturing my bursitus. It’s a veritable Woodstock, a real “happening”. The old bag in the wheel chair next to mine nudges me, smiling her toothless grin and says, “My son brought me a joint, come over to my room tonite and we’ll smoke it.” Only she’s the one with ahlzhiemers and forgets her son died of an overdose several years ago.
Refreshments are served after the wheel chair dance and concert and we get our cookie and dixie cup of cranberry juice. Various rock and roll artists are being played in the background, the same old, same old; CCR, the Stones, Grand Funk, etc. While I wonder to myself why we can’t ever have a Motown day, or Disco day, it’s always rock’n'roll. I guess that’s what the kids like.
Nap time. Everyone must take a nap. Back to bed. The NAs are going through my drawers and clothes, so I yell, “I don’t have any money, get the hell out!” I realize the afternoon shift personnel can barely speak English. Next thing I know I’m getting another tranqulizer. That’s not so bad.
Then supper - sitting with the same old bags at the same table, eating meager portions of awful food, listening to their same old stories on how much more successful their husbands were than me. I tell them their husbands were closet queens just to shake them up. That always works well.
Television in the lounge after that, and then thrown back into bed after one last potty trip, telling the NA I haven’t had a bowel movement in over a week. The NA responds, “Que?” Oh well, at least they are generous with the sleeping pills.
We baby-boomers have always liked our drugs. That will make it nice - if the NAs don’t steal them first that is.
Tomorrow we will have Euthanasia Registration Day.
March 12th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
But Terry,
Haven’t you heard - boomers aren’t GONNA die! They’ve taken so many drugs, they’ve become permanently delusional: Sixty’s the new thirty, eighty’s the new forty, etc…
(I wonder if I can request ‘Dream On’ on R’n'R day)…
March 12th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
OK, what inspired THIS post?
Let’s be fair, though; while I haven’t worked in a nursing home, I have visited them and my Mom was a CNA and thus I can guarantee you that there are many people there with GREAT compassion. I’ve taken my greyhound to one in our area to visit the residents and found it to be a very homey environment in which the residents were treated with great dignity and respct. And of course, they all wanted to talk about the greyhounds they saw at the track when they were young.
One woman didn’t want us to visit her, though. She was in her room as we passed so my escort and I offered a visit. She declined because she didn’t like dogs. But she looked at me, thanked me for coming, and told me that she was glad we were there; for those who DID want the visits and who miss their dogs.
What humility in that woman; what compassion for her fellow residents.
But there is truth in what you are saying, and you say it well. But still…what inspired it?
Sorry haven’t commented lately…been busy with class and overcoming stress. The good news, though, is that I’m on vacation, I’m studying, I’m amazed at God, and I figured out how my scanner works so you can go to my blog and see my first real portrait, quite literally inspired by God.
I can’t reproduce it. It was a one-time thing.
God bless!
March 12th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Even though I’m scared of heights, I think I’m going to take up sky diving as my new hobby.
And check into one of those snake handling religions. I’m not fond of snakes either.
March 12th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Julie - I don’t know why I woke up with this thought.
You are right - there are many good CNAs out there - and nice homes too - I’m probably going to end up in a welfare place like I describe however.
I’ve heard too many stories from people who work in health care though.
Like the wiccan CNA who enjoyed having sex with old men, or his punk co-worker who had himself photographed with residents who just died, before the funeral director came for the body.
I have other stories. Maybe I should write a sitcom?
March 12th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
[...] Found on the Abbey-Roads2 blog, a dystopic view of future nursing home life has me shuddering. But not for the reasons you might think. [...]
March 12th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Terry, yeah, healthcare definitely has its problems, but there are dedicated people, as well. I’ve been one of them in the mental health sphere and the realm of the developmentally disabled/ traumatic brain injured.
It was those jobs that taught me true compassion, I think. And I learned compassion from my co-workers.
But I’m with you; I fear the suffering you describe. Although, sometimes we have to take that suffering and make it fun. I used to joke with my high school best friend that we’d be the type to race our wheelchairs down the hallways and be the headaches decried by the staff.
I could see you doing that.
Wheelcair races, anyone?
March 12th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
I volunteer at such a facility and unfortunately, you’re right. Hopefully, before I get to the point where I need “assisted” living, I can put a bullet in my brain. However, with my luck, I’ll probably miss and shoot off my ear.
March 13th, 2007 at 10:35 am
The local Catholic blogger rest home! Think about it. You could spend the rest of your days with all of us talking over each other like a bad episode of The View (well, really, is there a good episode of The View?). Anyway, Adoro will be screaming at spiders and I’ll be on some tirade about the tasteless food. Good times or another vision of Hell?
For the record, I don’t DO Aqua Net or polyester pants.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Good times or another vision of Hell?
Sounds like good times to me, Cathy! I like the idea of StBlogs rest home.
Actually, if we can keep our computers, internet connections, manual dexterity and wits, anyrest home can be a little outpost of StBlogs. That’s some little bit of solace, as Time’s winged chariot draws near.
March 13th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
SPIDERS! SPIDERS! ALWAYS WITH THE SPIDERS! GET THE SPRAY OUT WILL YA! HUH!? SAY WHAT?!
Oh, that’s just a piece lint…what were we talking about…? Cathy, get me an ice cream cone, will you dear? I havnen’t had one of those since I was knee high to a butterfly. But no sprinkles, please, they look like spiders.
March 13th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Actually, kidding aside, I’m a little surprised to see several good Catholic bloggers here express the wish to escape the frailty and humiliations of advanced age through death.
It’s a wish I share, too. Yet it seems to me more and more Catholics characterize such a wish as an embrace of the Culture of Death —— tantamount to support for euthanasia.
Let me be clear: Doing what plantlady (jokingly?) suggests above would be euthanasia, and is of course forbidden.
But declining to continously stave off death through tube feedings, and even more so respirators? That seems to me to be another category entirely…though recent Catholic teaching seems to teach that both interventions are now morally mandatory.