Safe, Fed, and Worn Down

I’m 34 and I live in a nursing home. I’m safe, fed, and have my physical needs met, but it wears on me. It’s the sameness, and increasingly, the small indignities.

The first one I can remember is a woman grabbing me by the arm, lifting it so I couldn’t use my cane, steering me back to my room and calling me “kiddo.” For a long time that was the worst one, and I got past it. Now I don’t know if they’re happening more often, or if I’m just noticing more.

A few days ago I found my shoes in the trash can. Housekeeping had just cleaned my room. I don’t know if the lady thought they were trash, or if she was just moving them so she could mop, but she put them in the trash can. If she was just moving them, there were better places to put them, and she should have gotten them out when she was done. Now, after housekeeping leaves, I check to make sure my shoes aren’t in the trash.

I went to the bathroom, and one of the women who gives us our meds came to the room and asked my roommate where I was. The bathroom, she said. Instead of waiting for me to finish, or knocking first, the woman opened the door and walked in. “Medicine, mama.” She stood there while I finished and pulled my brief up and walked to the door. I didn’t know she was still there until I went to walk out. Then, without giving me a chance to put my phone down, and without offering help, she stuck a cup of water in one of my hands and my pills in the other. I had to try to tip the pills into my mouth without dropping my phone.

A nurse came in to give me my nutrition shake and nasal spray. She didn’t tell me before touching me. She didn’t tell me before she stuck the nasal spray nozzle in my nose.

Another one just got resolved. I’d switched from the full liquid diet, mostly strained cream soups and thinned cream of wheat and ice cream and pudding and shakes I never cared for but always forced down, to a pureed diet after the speech therapist and my GI dietician both agreed it should be fine. I loved the pureed food. I was sick of soups and shakes after weeks of them. Then breakfast came, and it was liquid diet food again. Two bowls of cream of wheat, pudding, juice, shakes. I got it down, thinking they’d just messed up one meal. Lunch came, and it was soup.

This time I said something. I told the woman who’d brought it, the same one who walked in on me in the bathroom, that I’m supposed to be on pureed food. She went and got another staff member, one I like. I explained again, and she went to the kitchen. For some reason they’d thought I was still on the liquid diet. She corrected them and came back with pureed food. We talked a bit. She said she stood up for me. When I pointed out that I’d been eating soup and shakes for weeks and really didn’t want any more of it, she reassured me, and reminded me that she’d been here, and that she saw what I got every day. It felt good to have someone care. But that mix-up shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Our morning CNA seemed irritable. I asked for water, and I could tell she wasn’t happy about how often I ask for it. Every hour or two. She brought two cups of ice water, one meant for me and one for my roommate. My roommate didn’t need hers yet, so she put the second cup on the dresser and told me where it was. To my roommate, she said, “She drinks a lot,” and told me I could drink the second one.

I have a condition that causes constant thirst. I can’t help it, and I don’t feel like I’m bothering them excessively.

There are a thousand little incidents. People not telling me before they touch me. People not telling me what’s on my tray at mealtimes, so I have to feel around to find out. Staff barging in throughout the day.

And then there’s the sameness. The same room, the same activities, the same people. I used to do bingo and dominos, but I stopped. Another resident drove me off. And bingo got boring, because I had one Braille card while everyone else had twelve.

None of this is a crisis. I’m not being hurt, not the way people usually mean. I’m being worn down. A door opens without a knock. I feel my way through a tray because nobody told me what was on it. I get one card while everyone else has twelve. It’s small, every time. And it keeps happening.