Elderly care debate | Behind a display board in the ninth week…

It is a well-known phenomenon that what we have not seen or experienced is often very different from what we thought. I, for example, thought that it had long been read and agreed that a person who has reached the last stage of life and for one reason or another can no longer live in his own house, should be allowed to spend the rest of his time in a municipal institution. A health center, if you will. And it has a private room. I thought so. There was some fix that said they almost have a right to it. To bring some of their favorite things with them. You can receive visitors, go to bed when you feel like it. Sit on a chair. In short, enjoy privacy. But I was wrong there.

They are the ones who enjoy privacy. The vast majority likely have it. This is good. But this is not about them. This is about those who do not have. Those who lie behind a curtain in a room they share with another human being. someone they don’t know. Someone they’ve never seen before. I had no desire to get acquainted. Those who stay there day after day, week after week, at worst, month after month. In a small room somewhat impersonal, where they brought at best a picture to keep on a bedside table, and where most of the necessary clothes were tucked away in a closet. This is about them. Because they exist. In the Lillehammer Health Center, for example, there are several of them.

Now it’s not a given that an 86-year-old woman without short-term memory and the ability to find her way around is best in a separate room. This is where she feels safe, even though she has her own thing about her and avoids events that make her confused. There may be other solutions that are better adapted to the individual. I am not in a position to say anything about it. What we can determine, even without the professional background and experience, is that no other solution is better than the one some people have to accept at Lillehammer today. It seems to be a perpetual emergency that is regretted and lamented again, without doing anything about it. Those left with black pepper, aside from those directly affected of course, are those who do their best every work day and know they want to do more. Those who have to apologize to their relatives say they don’t know when there might be another solution, if at all. And add that if something happens, indicating that it may be coming to an end, yes, of course you will have privacy.

Is it the term “elderly” that makes us not see the individual? It becomes very stripped, and it is very easy to hold it at arm’s length. Or are we simply tired of the eternal fuss about elderly care that is never enough. Which always requires more money that we don’t have, or that we see ourselves being better served by spending elsewhere. I don’t know, I never thought about that. But what I do know is that an 86-year-old who lived a life of dignity and self-respect was lying in a double room in bed away from the door behind a bulkhead at the ninth week without anyone being able to. Say how long this will last. And she’s not the only one in Lillehammer today.

Gunnar Tori Larsen, Lillehammer