This is the Bayview Campus of Johns Hopkins U. Hospital. The second floor of the Burton Pavilion here is designated the Lakeside unit, and seems to be all about geriatric (or pre-geriatric) patients with pharmaceutical adjustment needs in the psychiatric category. (It took me a few looks to find the lake in the hospital’s urban setting–I guess it’s the small rainwater overflow pond with a little spraying fountain in it that you can spy out the window of rooms on Jeff’s side of the hall.)
You stop at the front desk on your way in, sign the book, and get a paper wristband from the on-duty person before taking the elevator to the second floor. Once off the elevator, you are in a small foyer where you must push a button which elicits an electronic doorbell noise. Then someone from the nurses station inspects you by means of the built-in camera and pushes a button to unlock the door.
You enter a busy unit where, generally, several older people are nearby in wheelchairs or recumbent rolling chaises. Usually they are fussing about something or other. There are two lovely parakeets–one green, one yellow and orange–in a large glass terrarium by the window. They seem very happy and chirpy even though a little old lady told me “no,” they were not happy, “they want to be free.” Maybe they do, but I suspect there was some projection going on.
Then you go down the corridor to the right and press another electronic chime. This one plays the opening strains of “Für Elise,” then nothing happens. Nothing connected to the chime anyway. Instead, you catch a staff member on her way in or out and enter on her coattails. Jeff shares room 248 with Mr. R. Mr. R isn’t independently mobile, and is often situated in the small day room, which is actually a regular hospital room which happens to have a couple chairs and couches instead of beds. Many days, I find Jeff in the day room dozing in a chair.
They are still trying to regulate Jeff’s medication so that he is at least semi-functional, but not apt to pull cords out of the wall on a paranoid tear, while blocking the access and egress of nurses and aides whom he may have mistaken for tranvestites and/or robots.
As of today, we’re a little bit on the side of too-medicated. Today was better than yesterday in that he did not topple like a tree trunk into my lap face first, but it still took some work to get his entire lunch into him. Then I snagged a chocolate ice cream cup and a tiny carton of orange juice from the fridge down the hall, and fed him those. Those things are favorites. He still muttered a fairly on-going stream of non-reality-based observations (we need new boots, that’s a nice forklift...things like that,) but he sat with me in reasonable contentment while I read a snippet of The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson, aloud to myself.
When I called to make arrangements for Jeff to check in for a med adjustment (due to his disastrously escalating aggressive, delusional paranoid episodes,) they were very clear with me on one point—they are NOT a long-term care facility. He WILL be discharged. No argument on that point from me, but I suppose it must be an issue they deal with–families who do not wish to take their difficult elders home, med adjustment or not.
Yes, I expect Jeff to be discharged. I just do not know when, and in what cognitive condition.
2 comments:
I had time to see how you are doing, saw nothing new on this blog, and followed the link to the other site where you write. There you said something like "who wants to write in the Captain's log while the ship is going down." Maybe not that exactly, but that is what I remembered.
Though I don't know you, I have a feeling for what you are going through. I think that you should write in this blog and write often.
You don't have to write the Captain's log; you don't have to write always about the good ship Jeff. Although you wisely integrated your life with his, his life and illness does not define your life.
You have so many interesting things of which to write. You have been so busy with Jeff, I don't recall seeing much about the feelings of seeing all of your children living away from you. I don't think I recall ever seeing you write much about your father's death? Did it occur during the "life" of this blog?
I know that this blog is public, and perhaps some of those reflections are too personal for it since they may involve people who can read about themselves in it. However, if you have not written about these things privately, then I would encourage you to do so.
As a parent, we help our children individuate (I think that is the english term for it). As a spouse of an Alzheimer patient, you have been in the process of individuating again for some time now.
I think that writing about your processes of dealing with Jeff's illness is part of your purpose (connecting this comment with your previous blog entry), but I think that you have more to offer than that.
I hope that you receive these observations and encouragement with the good heart in which they are offered to you.
That is true Prof, and I do try to write about other things. But I am probably unlike the classic stereotype of a song writer in that heartbreak is NOT great fodder for material, in my case. Sometimes, a little bit down the road, I can approach a topic more easily, or feel fresh enough of mind to tackle something different altogether.
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