h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just Like Home, My Ass

I mentioned earlier, I have had 25 room mates, one after another, up to and including the pleasant Gretchen. A few died, a few went over to long term, and the rest were rehabilitated and went home, at least for a while. Even if they were only temporarily discharged, though, they had been given the thing that mattered, what everybody wanted most, what I will bet you a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts all the compos mentis residents still crave -- to return home. To be back in their house or apartment with their pets, pots and pans, to be among family and neighbors, to see familiar scenery, and hear the particular creak in that particular floorboard. To listen to the rain on their own roof, to be able to light a candle, cook their own meal, or hold a cat in their lap and look out a window at the view. You know. Home.

Of the resident part of the population, almost all have family or at least someone who handled an orderly transition from there to here. J next door: her daughter visits regularly to look after her mother's needs, to swap out her entire wardrobe with each change of season and bring her new books to read, take her out for lunch on occasion, or just sit in the main dining room and argue companionably. Almost all the residents have their portion of wall jammed with family photographs, or got the Ladera handyman to put up a shelf for them where they could place a few mementos. The family may even bring pet dogs to visit. There is some continuity.

Ladera wants us to be happy and comfortable and enjoy some limited sense of domestic contentedness. It's not Ladera's fault if we have nothing, and no member of administration has ever tried to tell me Ladera is just like home; an aide on the graveyard shift came up with that one. If a resident takes a dislike to an aide, or ceases to trust in some aide's ability to provide care, the resident can complain. They don't even need to provide a reason. I can say, "I don't want Annabelle to come near me any more!" and arrangements will be made for Annabelle to swap rooms with another aide. There is an Hispanic hospice patient who refuses to heed English being spoken at her, let alone speak it herself, so she needs to be attended by aides who speak Spanish. Another resident is convinced that the Hispanic aides are disrespecting her, and she only wants Anglos, but she'll settle for Tibetans (we have those).

A few residents are just hard to love. A certain hospice patient infuriates me with her insistence on her 'right' to have her tv on at all hours of the night. She deploys tantrums and keeps a notebook of all perceived shortcomings and omissions as a threat, an attempt to exert control. I hear her most nights shouting "Get out! Just get out!" after a hapless aide has appealed to have the teevee turned off. Now, as a fellow resident I could whack her upside the head with my reacher and call her a few names, but the aide has to behave professionally.

And of course I would get in trouble, and so I wouldn't really do that. Every time you think you've mastered the virtue of compassion, the game moves to the next level. She knows she's here to die. She just hasn't realized yet that she has to try and do it with class.

Deb

Thank you for these snapshots Lil. Are there set visiting times or do family and friends come and go all day?

And I know it's a silly thought, but I have an app on my smartphone that can work like an infra red remote control for a TV etc, and from quite a distance away. At work we're waiting for the students to work out they have it too and to sneakily turn data projectors off. You could use it to turn the sound down and the resident would never know it was you. Whacking her upside the head with your reacher might get you noticed.

Sadly, I have no smartphone, or I would go for that idea.

[Amy P]