Male Elderly Long Stay

Use it or lose it

has no place here. 

What better than

to restrain (by indifference)

in chairs upholstered

in the ghosts of those long dead. 

There is no stimulation here;

they sit in regimental rows,

row on row on row,

like some old soldiers

waiting for their final orders,

or some waiting room,

waiting for a doctor

who never shows.

This reinforced apathy

brings atrophy, weakens limbs. 

A fleeting insight

brings panic,

he rises, knees buckle;

he free falls, hits terra firma

with an almighty thud.

This morning

there is only two of us,

short staffing brings many risks. 

Who knows how many

signs and symptoms missed

as we hurriedly stuff thirty men

into waiting clothes,

stack them in the waiting rows,

stuff them full of
cereals and toast. 

(Well as many as we can,

for at 8.30 – finished or not

the breakfast trolley goes.)

They need time,

there is no place for it here. 

There are the wanderers of course

who will not conform;

who wander on their eternal journey

to God knows where.

There is a new admission;

he still has fight in him.

It will not last. 

Soon he will become like them,

his remaining memories

will leach into the chairs.

They need compassion,
there is no place for it here.

As a student nurse, my first ward placement was on female elderly long stay.  I must admit I was naïve – I had this silly notion that my days would be spent sharing tea and sticky buns with confused little old ladies, enjoying their muddled conversations and listening as they reminisced about the good old days.  How wrong I was.

My first shift was that of a morning, there were two qualified staff, a care assistant and two students (including me and we supposedly supernumery) and we had forty patients to assist to rise – that is eight patients each.  We students had no idea who could weightbear, who was mobile, who was aggressive and so on, but this seemed to only bother us and we had to get on with it.

It took me well over an hour to wash and dress and seat my little ladies in their chairs – in fact they did not have their chairs – anyone was good enough.   I was totally exhausted and perspiration was dripping off my forehead.  I remember thinking ‘What the hell am I doing here?  Is this really what I want to do?’ as I realised my silly notion was indeed that – silly.

The majority of the ladies had dementia and were either admitted from the great outside or were ‘long stay’ patients who had spent much of their life in the hospital and had succumbed to dementia as they aged.  A couple were long stay patients who had not demented but reached the ripe old age of sixty and had been transferred as that is how things worked.  They were floor pacers – like caged lions bored out of their minds – both with ‘acquired’ OCD – their rituals their only means of escape from the eternal ennui of ward life.

All the ladies – bar the two floor pacers - were sat row on row on row, there was no stimulation whatsoever – no radio, no record player, no television, not a thing.  Any new admission that rose from her seat was told to sit down and soon learnt that that was her lot and after a few days did just that – sat (and died inside).

My fellow student and me attempted to converse with our patients – but lack of stimulation had had devastating effects – rarely were words spilt from their mouths – they existed in body only.

Male elderly long stay was my fifth placement and it was very much the same bar a few wanderers - not pacers, most of whom were demented and had held onto remnants of their personality.

I saw an awful thing there – it was not direct abuse but that of sheer and utter thoughtlessness, a manifestation of the warder-inmate mentality that still very much prevailed there, and it reinforced my vow to myself that once qualified I would never work in a psychiatric hospital – this vow I had made on female elderly and it is a vow I kept.

Anna :o]

Entered at Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub – thanks dVerse!