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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 12, 1978)
Wood often ‘highlight of day’ THE BATTALION Page 7 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 1978 ursing home nothingness By PHYUS WEST W^Diseo music blared from the mahogany television. Smiles ^ added on the tired worn faces of 1 ,(l ver-haired residents, who sat on te ihioned, pastel chairs. fhe music felt out of place as rich as I did. I wondered if all vol- 'ublif teers had the same queasy feeling 1 c not fitting in. '(jicThe residents at Sherwood M with. Care Facility, a nursing privifflie located near Bryan High iTtaiool, seemed comfortable with as truth. They live for their biweekly °ur i:igo game, holiday parties and iu Train on Saturdays. Most days reqAh they sit strapped to wheel- air airs or beds, staring emptily as chnioey wait for their meals. Food is o ually the highlight of their day. lOhosMattie Roy, a resident, expressed 'urstBlew like a philosophy. “Food is mg,” she said. “You need food to prr f e. To live, you need food.” ' andThe training manual that Sher- ?htei»d social and rehabilitative direc- ae (i* Debbie Sulik gave me reinforced leet is thought. It said: “Of all the ex- ijences that we can have from re il rth until death, the deepest ones :ecamter around food.” EJlBut what could Roy expect for ent nch? Potatoes, a small applesauce ferskrving and ground meat is a typical i havef ela: Sherwood could be described as either an orphanage or a day care center for about 200 elderly people. Billie Carter, assistant social direc tor, said the residents are often like children, and the nurse’s aides are their guardians. She even calls some of the residents her babjes. And like children, the residents ask for things that are not good for them or do things that they should not do because they do not know the consequences: asking to be unstrap ped from their beds or chairs, diabe tics asking for sugar, patients on low soduim diets requesting salt and pa tients who wheel or walk out of the home and wander away. No one briefed me on what to ex pect at Sherwood and I was not pre pared to handle these situations. I was signed up as just another of the 100 volunteers (mainly college stu dents,) who visit weekly or monthly. “Most of them are from church groups and others are from veteran’s associations,” said Sulik. Volunteer enrollment has declined about one- third for some visiting groups, ac cording to records. My first day (and usually thereaf ter for a week), I visited residents in the four wings by myself. Remem bering my quick lesson on reality orientation, on how to greet and Economy classes lack money ver, ■ w ✓ nomic education is a hot issue till a long Way from being im- lented in the public school sys- of Texas, a Texas Education cy official said at Texas A&M 5 and diversity Friday. c l° k Louis Crigar, TEA program di- Stor for social studies, made the e fr'iervation in a speech given to ,1er g i Hie 200 school administrators and 'to-re-iucators attending a conference on lepar'ifership in free enterprise educa- >30 (c m sponsored by Texas A&M. re d# :e bt "Senate Bill 1040 legislated that t exp# course 'American Economics d ScfBtems’ be implemented in all cur- xvouldpuim in Texas grades I through d eas-jr Grigar commented. "The ed. Igislature gave us the directive to ih the course, but they did not llate any money to fund it. j g the operation has been a shoe program since its inception, ling on private funds from the Small Business Administration and local Chambers of Commerce for its survival,” said Grigar. "We understand the difficulty the school systems of Texas are having with implementation of this pro gram, but we (TEA) are admonish ing them to take the first step in im plementation.” meet the elderly, I began my visits. Sulik explained reality orienta tion. She said, “Tell them good morning or good afternoon. Inquire into how their day went. And use their name at least once in the con versation.” Sounds simple. But try asking a resident how well his day was when he has just undergone brain surgery, when he is critically ill and has tubes running from his mouth to his nose, or when his tongue is paralyzed from a stroke. In many cases I had no guidelines to follow. I knew only one other regular volunteer, but she visited only on Saturdays. So I really did not know what the other volunteers did. What about asking the staff ques tions? The fewer the better. Volun teering was not supposed to take much skill, so I was left on my own. Even the nurses were not very talkative to new volunteers. On oc casion I was made to fell like an in vader — someone who was spoiling the residents, as one nurse had bluntly remarked. Isolated. I did not know what to do when a patient asked me to un strap me from the bed. Frances Woman, a Sherwood resident for the past few years, called me into her room. She sat upright and pouted. She told me to unstrap her ankles. The yellowish cloth belt hurt, she said. Confused, and not seeing any aides, I was about to loosen the belt when Carter hap pened to enter the room. “Patients are tied up so that they won’t fall off their beds,” Carter ex plained. They are going to ask for a ’lot of things — just tell them you’re going to get someone to help or you’ll be back later,” she said. At first I did not know the resi dents are not allowed on the front grounds unattended, even when ulancei ire ( i one r Now You Know United Prrjj International , }!ti The Arab state of Oman and Qua- have never held censuses. they are capable of moving around the home. For instance, I was walking into the home, and a resident asked me to hold the door open so she could wheel out. No sooner had I opened the door (and the resident was on the pavement) than an aide ran after her. She retrieved her patient, while giving me a nasty glance. Runaways are a common occur rence Carter said. Yet I was told no thing of them. One day four people ran away, Vicki Martin, a nurse’s aide said. But they were quickly found, she added. Recently one woman was found far from the home caught in some bushes. Carter said. The staff members which number over 200 and consist of nurses’ aides, nurses, social directors and administrators, seem as distant from the patients as they are from the volunteers. Most on the staff are black, and many of the residents are prejudiced. Many of the elderly grew up in the early 1900s in an era when minorities’ rights were often not respected. The black staff members treat the white residents better than the resi dents treat the staff, said Carter, a black herself. But treatment may not be so much a race problem. Other com plaints involved late delivery of food, misplaced mail, uncleaned fingernails, noisy halls, bad dental care and very few walks outside, among other things. Many residents want to go out side, jbut they have no one to take them for a walk. Their only contact with the outside is often just volun teers like myself. Many held tight to my hand when I talked to them. Touching is very important to them. 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