A lot to think about : Wandering through a Care Home

I was not totally happy when I was in the geriatric ward in a large hospital in London but I was not afraid like I was in the nursing home because if something was wrong I could complain and I have complained since I left the hospital but overall my experience of the North Middlesex hospital is extremely positive as long as you can talk to somebody and find out what to do. the patient liaison service works very quickly and within a day you could be and within a day you could be speaking a motion or even to a doctor in the nursing home if you questioned your medication you got into terrible trouble. pretend that they were ignoring you but in the background they were trying to do with the problem secretly and I felt terrible for 48 hours after I was given the wrong medication when I was told it wasn't wrong it was because my eyesight was poor that I thought it was wrong.It is is a serious error not to accept criticism openly. accepting it will help both a person making the criticism

I was in hospital for 2 weeks and in some ways it was similar. fewer nurses more carers in the home we were washed ourselves very well every morning in the hospital it was less than once every two days. look at least in the hospital there are witnesses to what happens namely the other patients and the other staff. And there is PALS that is very good indeed as long as you speak out properly.

it's hard being bedbound.Then when you get out its frightening being out. The safety of a prison can tempt us and make it even harder to learn to walk again. when the second rail was taken off my bed I felt anxious

We may think that my expectations are too high for our society. if I would say they are ideals. they are something we can aspire to. the gap between what we do and what we would like to do can be painful. but it's good if one can maintain the tension: can keep both ends connected

you may think that I am giving nusr pHing homes a hard time by criticizing what I experienced and what I saw but I would go even further and say that many of the things that happened there which are unkind cruel or wrong happen in the wilder society as well 40% of dementia is preventable with who is more likely to get it? it's the poor of course some people may be able to make wonderful meals very cheaply but enough everybody can do that and if you are short of money and anxious about the cost of living it doesn't make it easy to race away from sheets ready-made food

I love to go awandering around a Nursing Home and as I go I love to sing to drown out people's growns I love to take my sleeping pills, 3 hours before the time is giving patients sedatives a sin or just a crime? I love to see Dementia, she likes to scream and yell. she. longs to go as in the air, she's either ill or well. It's lonely in a nursing home. there's nothing much to do. I think we'll go through the snow, to catch a dose of flu. I love to go a wandering, around a little town now it's just these corridors, it sometimes it gets me down

When I was bed bound and I had a catheter in my bladder I felt a lot of pain in my bladder and it was not being empty by the catheter it felt very uncomfortable. someone used become to my room in the middle of the night to empty the bag because it was not big enough to last for the whole night and when they came I sometimes said I am in pain are you sure that it's connected properly, I have just spent nearly a month a big hospital and I was afraid of that. I don't know whether it was deliberate but they said to me some night night if you keep complaining we will send you back to the hospital. I was so lonely and so afraid I believed them I thought I was in pain and I would have to go to A and E. so I thought I'd better not go to sleep. after few nights like this I was not able to sleep and I went from being able to sleep fo 18 months. Until I came home. other times they were refused to change the disposable pads that the bedbound people had to wear and I was so for them if

The deputy manager seemed to play the mostmost powerful role. Then there were the nurses. the carers,the third the cleaners were last. Sothe nurse became a very powerful figure. Asfor the doctor the general practitioner they see far above anybody. I think all this had a bad effect on the carers and the residents. hierarchies of power are not productive of loving kindness

I have been going over in my mind my experience of being with someone with advanced dementia and getting to know her and getting to be a friend. The best analogy I can think of to be how you would be meeting a smallish wild animal.You approach cautiously but not fearfully.It will be important to be in good contact with your body.It's not only because a fear but it's a good way to be with people to be feelingly inside your body. After that you can speak to them it seems but there is no hurry at all. I also said to this particular lady that if she kept screaming for more than five minutes. and I would tell her that I will not stay in her room and then I would go and I would say I will come back tomorrow or soon anyway the next day I never made a time because how she was varied. And I could say the same of myself. it was very slow progress which I heard her talking to herself. she was saying that I the writer am a very special person. I am one of a kind so I have become part o