This might strike you as unlikely, even disrespectful… but… Alzheimer’s and dementia patients are fun.
We call them “residents,” not patients. When I talked with my old friend, Peter, he seemed surprised that I’m having a good time with the residents.
“It’s different than it was with my father,” I said. “I don’t have any emotional attachment to them.”
Sure, some parts of the job are difficult and unpleasant. Especially the stink. The residents are never really clean. Night sweats are an unfortunate reality of Alzheimer’s. So, the residents are pretty funky when they get up in the morning.
The stench of piss and shit never goes away. I’ve already gotten used to that. The chemical odors are worse. Nasty chemical disinfectants are used to wash the floors. And, the hand wash solutions! More astringent chemicals. By the end of my shift, I reek.
As soon as I get home, I toss the scrubs in the washer and take a shower.
So, what’s the fun part? That would be the interaction with the residents. They’ve returned to childhood and dependence. In the same way that raising children is a load of laughs, caring for the residents is constant comedy and drama.
Although they’ve lost their ability to function in the adult world, their personalities are intact. Stacked up 40 to a ward, the residents have been thrust back into a world that is part elementary school and part playground sandbox. Residents make friends and enemies. They form cliques. They play tricky games with their caretakers.
Caring for them forces me to be cheerful. You’ve got to smile at them. Hell, you’d have to be a hard hearted son of a bitch not to smile at them. Suffering with so many physical losses and depression, the residents need relentlessly cheerful care.
We play with the residents. They are past their days of labor (although they resist accepting that). Nothing is demanded of them except that they sleep, eat, shit, piss and sleep some more. Like schoolchildren, they play with jigsaw puzzles and play schoolyard games.
So, surprisingly, my shifts in the Alzheimer’s ward are quite pleasant. We laugh with the residents over their disappearing abilities. We are, as the Karaoke Queen says, “all headed in that direction.”
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