And tomorrow it will happen all over again.
Les, whose name has been modified for this story, is one of many
within the retirement home who suffers from severe dementia. Because
he doesn’t know the routine of the home setting by heart, as any cognitive
resident would, when the workers come for care he is always caught off
guard. He rarely recognizes faces, and when he does he can’t say where
he remembers them from. Constantly confronted with missing origins,
he makes fists against them and fights back the only way he knows how.
This has gone on for more than five years. The workers will tell you
that Les is a man defined by paranoia and violence. The nurses will say
how they dread visiting him for the daily medication pass, that Les has
learned (despite his disease or because of it) to associate everything with
the facility as bad – the care, the voice, the helping hand. His way of
expressing this sentiment is to wander up and down the halls at all hours,
kicking along in his wheelchair, looking for someone, anyone, on whom
to take out his cooped up frustrations.
There’s a saying in the healthcare field about people with
dementia: if they were kind people before, the disease will turn them
mean. There’s also a saying around the retirement home regarding Les:
he’s been rotten his entire life.
In fact, because of his tendencies towards violence, a new rule
regarding his care plan has been implemented here at the home: oneon-one care. This was ordered by a doctor due to rottenness – at least
what the workers will tell you. Really it is because Les has been deemed
a threat to himself and to others. He is tall and his legs are wobbly. He
has fallen on the hard linoleum floors before. Aggression towards other
residents exacerbates this fact, the way he lunges at them. What this type
of care means is that an aide of the home must sit with Les at all times,
24-hours-a-day. The aide who is honored with any eight-hour period
must follow him when he roams and redirect him when he fights. They
will be responsible for changing him, washing him, giving him the best
quality of life. Mostly they are told to keep him in his room and to not let
him out.
For any new worker of the facility, this is a terrifying task.
“Whatever you do,” the nurses will tell them, “don’t look away
from him. He’s liable to haul off and whack you when you’re not
looking.”
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