Not Right In The Head

by Michelle Wyatt

  Another resident had her own personal form of protest. She would take her teeth out at the dining table and set them on the plate next to her food and refuse to put them back in until the food was prepared to her satisfaction. I bet the other residents fought over who got to sit at her table every day. Nothing spikes the appetite more than a nice set of false teeth sitting on the table—yummo, pass the salt please.

  Mum, though, was a good eater, probably because Dad made it his mission to force every piece of food into her mouth, whether she was hungry or not. I think my mother was the only woman who, after a couple of years residing in the nursing home, had put on ten kilos. While everyone else was complaining about the food, the response I got from Mum, every time I asked her how lunch or dinner was, was always the same: ‘Beautiful.’

  17

  All aboard

  Sitting in a nursing home all day can become quite monotonous for residents. If they are not confined to wheelchairs, there is at least lots of room to wander around, in an environment that is always safe. But it is nice to have an outing—so when the minibus pulls up outside it is an occasion for much joy and excitement.

  These outings are planned weeks in advance, with a certain level of forethought as to where to go, and the best combination of residents to take. At Mum’s facility there was usually only room for one wheelchair on the bus, and if Mum didn’t get that spot, Dad was not a happy camper. He’d get a sniff of any upcoming outing and would march straight to the manager’s office to make sure Mum’s name was on that list. It usually worked out okay, because if they took Mum, they also got the added bonus of Dad, who could in effect act as another helper. Trips to nurseries and outdoor cafes seemed to be the best locations, as they give the residents a bit of room to move around.

  Much as Dad enjoyed taking Mum out on the bus, there was always a downside: there was always a ‘chucker’. Yep, a seat on the ‘vomit comet’ wasn’t always the best place to be on a warm summer’s day. Dad has a pretty strong stomach, but if the vomit happened early-ish in the journey, the smell was pretty intense by the time they arrived at their location, and put a bit of a downer on the whole trip.

  Me, I do not have a strong stomach at all. I am what is known as a ‘sympathetic vomiter’. If someone vomits within a ten-metre radius of me, up it comes. As a child I shared a room with my sister, and if she got sick during the night, Mum would grab a bucket for my sister, and then Dad would have to grab one for me. My friends in high school would go into the toilet cubicle next to me and pretend to vomit by half flushing the toilet (pretty accurate sound effect) until they got me started. Another time, at my cousin’s twenty-first birthday party, Mum said she wasn’t feeling well, and before you knew it I was outside the local footy club hosing down shoes. We had driven Mum and Dad to the party, and on the drive home I had my window down and my head hanging out like a labrador on a summer’s day.

  So if the nursing home minibus made it to the destination free of incident, then it was usually a nice outing for the residents. The hardest part was keeping them all together once you got there—like herding cats. I often see lines of kindergarten children walking down the street with rope or ribbon tied around their waists to keep them walking in line together—but I guess you can’t do that with the elderly (especially if The Choker was in the group, and somebody else was actually choking—nobody would pay any attention). So it’s all about keeping everyone together and staying vigilant.

  Outings were also a big-ticket item at my aunt’s nursing home. One particular day they headed off to the local RSL, and my aunt was first on the bus—she loved a bit of a play on the pokies, and had been looking forward to it for days. Clearly it was never the intention to take a group of Alzheimer patients out to gamble, so when they arrived, they were ushered into a room set up with a long table and chairs, well away from the gaming area—much to the dismay of my aunt, who had so many gold coins in her handbag it was a wonder she could lift it. After initially sitting down with the other residents for a cup of tea and pre-lunch nibble, she started getting itchy feet, and when the carers weren’t looking, made her way to the gaming room. Within a minute or two she was apprehended and escorted back into their lunch area. But five minutes later, she had slipped through the cracks again. After her second attempt, they stationed an RSL staff member at the entrance of the gaming room to stop any further endeavours. Even so, she managed to break out again—but instead of heading to the gaming room, she left the building and hailed a cab down the road. Imagine the surprise on my cousin’s face when her mum turned up on her doorstep ranting and raving about how she’d been denied her right to gamble. (It’s those kind of stories that illustrate how instinct can kick in: my aunt couldn’t tell you what she did that morning, but had enough wits and long-term memory working for her that she could hail a cab and give the driver her daughter’s address.)

  One afternoon, my cousin took her for an X-ray of her thumb. There were no parking spots outside the radiology rooms, so she dropped her mum at the entrance and asked her to wait there while she parked. A few minutes later, when she arrived at the front door, her mum was nowhere to be found. No sign of her in the car park, so she ventured inside for a look. Not in the waiting room. My cousin asked the receptionist, who indifferently shook her head. Investigating further, my cousin found my my aunt meandering around the CT area. Fugitive back in custody, they managed to get the X-ray done. My cousin then asked reception if they could watch her mum while she fetched the car, and was pleasantly surprised to see her mum sitting patiently in the reception area when she pulled up out the front. She loaded her mum into the car, but just as they were about to drive off, my aunt said she was missing her handbag. A quick check of the back seat; no sign of the handbag. My cousin turned the car off, took the keys with her (her mum had never driven a car, but today could be the day she decided to start!) and found the handbag sitting under a chair in the reception area. Back in the car park, she jumped in the car, only to find the passenger seat empty. She looked around the car park just in time to see her mum marching towards the main road at a cracking pace. When she’d caught up, my anxious cousin scolded her mum for not waiting in the car; my aunt retorted that she was simply going to the bus stop, as she had clearly been left behind and nobody was going to drive her home.

  We were quite lucky that Mum never managed to successfully wander off on us. As her conditioned worsened, while they were still living at home, Dad tried to get her out on little trips as often as he could—drives around her childhood neighbourhood, trips to the local shops for a coffee and sandwich. They would visit our house a few times a week so Dad could just potter in our garden, knowing Mum was safe inside with me. But these trips were not easily executed. Trying to get Mum in a car was like the ancient and intricate art of origami. If you didn’t do each step in the right order, you had no hope. Not only could she not comprehend what we were asking her to do, but her limbs would stiffen, making it almost impossible to get her into the right position so we could lift her into the passenger seat. We would get her arms in the right configuration, but once we moved on to the legs, the arms would straighten again—like trying to fold the bottom of a cardboard box into that formation where you theoretically don’t need to tape it up. I always use tape—but I couldn’t really use tape on Mum.

  Nursing homes generally do a great job of fostering activities to help stimulate those residents who can’t actually go out for day trips. Dad’s garden club is still a regular fixture on the weekly in-house social and leisure calendar at Mum’s old nursing home. Another popular fixture is bingo. Now there’s an interesting concept: who thought it’d be a good idea to sit a bunch of dementia patients down with bingo cards and call out numbers, expecting them to fill out their cards correctly? The bingo sessions I witnessed were like walking into a toy store and setting off all the talking animals. The bingo caller would get through maybe three balls and someone would call out ‘Bingo!’—that would start a chain reaction, with the call
s of ‘Bingo!’ coming thick and fast. Clearly nobody could actually have bingo after three balls, so the caller would continue calling to around the six-ball mark. She would then get up and wander around to every patient who was holding up a card and was shouting out ‘Bingo!’ over and over again—which was most of them—and then, after ascertaining that none of them was a winner, she would resume her chair, call out the next number, and the process would continue for the next half hour. One afternoon while we were sitting with Mum, my brother heard a bingo game start up in the communal living room. He thought it would be funny to call out ‘Bingo!’ to see if it would set off a chain reaction. It did. (Remember, he is also the kind of guy who tells his younger sister she was adopted.)

  Another favourite event on the social calendar is fancy dress day. I realise it’s fun for residents to dress up and have a party—but aren’t they confused enough? To be sitting opposite Superman for afternoon tea might be a little confronting for someone who wears their underwear over their trousers for all the wrong reasons. Look to your right and hello, you’re sitting next to Pocahontas. And there goes the Easter bunny … in September? Perhaps they should also have a ‘Dress In Your Normal Clothes, Put On The Correct Way’ day. No misbuttoned cardigans. No odd shoes, or shirts on inside out. And definitely no naked strolls around the corridors.

  The monthly newsletters in the communal areas keep the residents and their families updated on all the latest and upcoming events, including celebrations, residents’ birthdays, anniversaries and the like. One particular event caught my eye:

  Wednesday, 9 May—Girls With Gadgets will be doing a presentation in the 3rd floor dining room. Gentlemen, you are more than welcome to come along and see the demonstration. I’m sure there will be gadgets that you will find useful. More details on the noticeboard.

  The dictionary tells us that a gadget is an ‘ingenious device’. If these girls were trying to bring something ingenious into the lives of these dementia patients, I think they might have been in for a tough sell, as most of these patients can’t even feed themselves. Still, I’m guessing they pulled a capacity crowd that afternoon.

  Craft days are another highlight on the calendar. It’s always good to have some kind of activity that keeps residents stimulated, and craft absolutely ticks that box. It was amazing to see how clever and skilled they could be when they were doing something that was obviously still ingrained from years of practice. Tables would be strewn with ribbons and polystyrene balls, string, glue and paper—and all the wonderful knickknacks created during these craft sessions would be sold at the annual Christmas stall. In a spirit of democracy, Dad bought one of everything that anyone had made—his unit in the week before Christmas could’ve featured in a television episode of Hoarders: Christmas Spirit. He’d buy enough tree decorations, Christmas card holders, tissue box holders and doilies to cater for the dining room at Hogwarts.

  These crafty creations would also adorn every door handle within the nursing home, and Christmas spirit was always in abundance. There were always the most magnificently decorated Christmas trees on every level—or should I say, the Christmas trees started out magnificently decorated, but after a couple of weeks would all be looking a little worse for wear.

  One lady on Mum’s floor, Dot, took quite a fancy to the decorations on the communal tree; she would spend much of her time trying to pluck them off and spirit them back to her room. She wasn’t a tall woman, so her procuring was limited to the lower limbs of the tree. Her style was not to get an armful and stagger back to her room and unload the lot; instead, she would just gradually pick away—maybe part of her knew that nobody would notice one or two missing each morning and afternoon. The carers would find them tucked away on a shelf in her cupboard, and would just put them back on the tree at the end of each week. It was like a well-rehearsed dance of kleptomania where nobody ends up in jail. No real harm done, and we found it quite entertaining to see if we could catch Dot in the act.

  One morning, a little glint of Christmas sitting high on the tree caught Dot’s attention. Nothing was going to stop her getting her hands on that tinselled gem. She started off by pulling some of the lower branches down, to bend the top of the tree down towards her, but as she let go of a branch with one hand to grab another, the limb would flip back up and almost take her out with it. Then she started jumping up to reach the decoration, but given the shape of a Christmas tree, that was always going to end badly. You can’t jump up without jumping in—which is precisely what she did. All we heard was a crash, a thud, and the sound of breaking glass.

  Everyone jumped up and ran to the tree. It was lying on its side, with the lights still flashing, and baubles rolling away at a rapid rate. Dot was nowhere to be seen, so we all assumed she had claimed her prize and left the scene of the crime. Then, in weirdly similar fashion to the scene from The Wizard of Oz where those ruby slippers can be seen under Dorothy’s house, we noticed a Grosby slipper poking out from a lower limb. The tree had fallen on top of Dot, and she was pinned beneath it. Luckily the tree was an artificial one and didn’t weigh a ton, so we managed to lift it up and get Dot to her feet; she hadn’t suffered any ill effects from her efforts. The broken remnants were safely cleared away, and all the wayward decorations rounded up. Well, almost all the decorations were recovered—Dot had managed to knock her prize bauble off the top of the tree and had her spindly little fingers tightly wrapped around it. She deserved that decoration. I hope it remains in her family, passed down from generation to generation as a treasured possession.

  Christmas decorations were not the only objects of Dot’s desire. She was also quite fond of a man in uniform. So much so that every couple of weeks Dot would activate the fire alarm at the nursing home, just so the fire brigade would show up. Dad said she loved seeing those lovely red fire engines show up, all shiny and big—but part of me thinks she quite liked seeing those brave firemen show up, all shiny and big. I was there one afternoon when Dot got a hankering for a firey, and although the staff were always pretty sure the alarm was just triggered by Dot pushing the button, they of course needed to take the alarm seriously and thoroughly check the building. The fire station was just down the road, so the big red engine would arrive before anyone could call in the false alarm. The sound of the sirens pulling into the car park always created a frenzied dash to the balconies for a front-row view of the drama not about to unfold. In some way I got the sense that if it was a quiet day at the fire station, the firemen would all take a drive just for something to do. An outing for them, and at least an hour’s worth of entertainment for the nursing home—wins all round.

  My aunt’s nursing home also had regular smoke alarm incidents. First they would hear a loud beeping sound, and then quite often the sprinklers would activate. So where there is smoke there is fire, right? Not always. Turned out that where there was smoke, there was a smoker. One particular gentlemen resident would somehow manage to get cigarettes smuggled into the nursing home, on a worryingly regular basis, and every now and then would set off the alarm. Old Mr Marlboro man just loved to smoke. It wasn’t as if he hid his addiction to tobacco. If anyone visited the home, he would wander up behind them, appearing almost out of nowhere, and in a deep, whispery voice enquire, ‘Got a smoke?’ I just hope he wasn’t sneaking into other residents’ rooms in the middle of the night, leaning over their bed, waiting for their eyes to open, and asking, ‘Got a smoke?’

  Maybe he worked on the theory that if he asked often enough, and asked enough people, someone at some point would actually give him a cigarette—perhaps another resident’s family members feeling sorry for him, or maybe a carer who got tired of him asking, or maybe members of his own family who were trying to make him happy in the only way they knew how.

  Maybe, every time he asked, they should say he’d just had one—after all, he did have Alzheimer’s.

  18

  Pushed to the limit

  Once Mum was in the nursing home and became less and less mobile, we
thought it was time to buy her a wheelchair of her own, rather than use one of the empty ones lying around the facility, of which about three were up for grabs at any given time on any given day—especially when we came across one that hadn’t been cleaned down properly after the last resident had vacated it, sending my germ-a-phobe tendencies into overdrive.

  First I thought about looking on eBay, but felt a bit nervous about getting one in less than perfect working condition, and then began freaking about why someone would be selling a perfectly good wheelchair—what happened to the person who was using it, and why don’t they need it anymore? My mind went into crazy-person mode and I closed the eBay window. Plan B. I did a general Google search for wheelchairs and found quite a few suppliers in our area. To save myself some groundwork, I decided to simply ring to see what they had in stock, and maybe just buy one over the phone—easy peasy, all sorted, job well done.

  Not so much. The first company put me through to a salesman to outline all the options. I explained that the wheelchair was for my mother to use for outings, so we just wanted something comfortable and lightweight that we could simply throw in the car, yadda yadda yadda. Then the questions started.

  ‘Will you be needing attendant handbrakes?’

  ‘Umm, not entirely sure what that even is.’

  ‘Will your mother be operating the wheelchair herself, or will an attendant be pushing her?’

  ‘My father will be pushing her.’

  ‘Well then, you’ll be needing attendant handbrakes.’

  ‘Okay then.’

  ‘Are you after a steel frame, or aluminium frame?’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘One is made out of steel, and one is made out of aluminium.’

  This was clearly not going well.

  Salesman: ‘How much does your mother weigh?’