Reply #26: is it possible? I hope so

[velvet]

I worked in the arts most of my life and was generally a happy bohemian, but in the last few years I've needed a day-job and have been working part-time in an aged care facility. Here I am a care assistant for people who did, or chose not to, become a burden on their families, and for people who had no one to look after them when due to physical infirmity or dementia they became unable to look after themselves. Ours is not one of those places you read about in the news where people are neglected or demeaned, our management adheres to all the best practice standards and the staff bend over backwards all day every day to meet the individual needs of the people in our care.

And yet ... and yet ... not one of the staff, including me, would honestly say they'd wish to end their days here. Because no matter how good the clinical care is, no matter how nice the rooms and the grounds, how good the food, how many music mornings or bowls games or painting classes with Velvet are scheduled, it's not home. It's an institution. You have no say in who you live with. You shower or are helped to shower at set times, you eat at set meal-times and in the dining-room, unless you're ill. You have your own room and staff must knock before they enter but you have little real privacy, your every fart is documented. Government authorities require vast amounts of documentation and of course it is important and necessary but ... when I think about my intimate details recorded in some ever-fattening folder, I shudder.

I work with people who have had multiple mini-strokes who require two staff-members to shift them with a mechanical lifter from wheelchair to bed to commode and back again, because they cannot even stand, let alone walk. People with severe dementia who have no idea why they had to leave their own home and who try several times a day to go back there. People who when asked how they are reply "Alive, unfortunately." And people who have still have some ability to do things for themselves but have given up and given themselves over to passivity.

But I also work with people who, luckily, are not bewildered by dementia, and despite knee replacements, hip replacements or the onset of Parkinson's disease, are still able with the aid of those marvellously engineered roller-walkers, to get around by themselves. People who are still able to think for themselves, people who have friends and/or family who visit and take them on outings, people who enjoy their meals and the company of other residents and who participate in games and activities with grace and enthusiasm.

And I wonder which I'll be. I wonder what my old age, if I have one, will be like. I'm 58, single, no children, no siblings. I'm doing fine right now but each day on the job I see my possible future and everything in me cries "Nooooooooooooo!" I would rather die. I hope if the decisive moment ever comes I will have the means, the courage and the wit to do the job properly. But who knows - even the sharpest brains have been blunted by dementia and the will to live can be very strong despite tremendous physical suffering.

Please forgive the rant, I try hard to be professionally calm on the job and by and large I succeed, but it's been a particularly difficult day. People with dementia can be very demanding and today I've had a gutful. Kayakjohnny, your OP gave me an opening to vent a little, thanks. I'm gonna go make some art now, it's the best antidote to these kind of ruminations, dontcha know. :)