Friday, November 7, 2014

“She Expected More from Life than Safety.”

More from this marvelous book, Being Mortal.

Gawande tells the story of an eighty-nine year old woman who, after falling twice within one week, made the decision to leave her condominium and move (‘be admitted’ as the medical parlance goes) to a nursing home.  I tell the rest of the story here from BEING MORTAL, pages 74-75.

“She picked the facility herself. It had excellent ratings and nice staff, and her daughter lived nearby. She had moved in the month before I met her. She told me she was glad to be in a safe place – if there’s anything a decent nursing home is built for, it is safety. But she was wretchedly unhappy.

“The trouble was that she expected more from life than safety. ‘I know I can’t do what I used to,’ she said, ‘but this feels like a hospital, not a home.’

“It is a near-universal reality. Nursing home priorities are matters like avoiding bedsores and maintaining residents’ weight – important medical goals, to be sure, but they are means, not ends.  The woman had left an airy apartment she furnished herself for a small beige hospital-like room with a stranger for a roommate. Her belongings were stripped down to what she could fit into the one cupboard and shelf they gave her. Basic matters, like when she went to bed, woke up, dressed, and ate were subject to the rigid schedule of institutional life. She couldn't have her own furniture or a cocktail before dinner because it wasn't safe.

“There was so much more she felt she could do in her life. ‘I want to be helpful, play a role,’ she said. She used to make her own jewelry, volunteer at the library. Now her main activities were bingo, DVD movies, and other forms of passive group entertainment. The things she missed most, she told me, were her friendships, privacy, and a purpose to her days.  Nursing homes have come a long way from the firetrap warehouses of neglect they used to be. But it seems we’ve succumbed to a belief that once you lose your physical independence, a life of worth and freedom is simply not possible.”

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