the rest of your life

Comment: One might think that time is the only thing that is enough for an old and sick person. He’s not like this. Time has lost everything.

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Anyone who becomes seriously ill, anyone who becomes so ill that they need help and care, has lost control of their life. In a way or another. For a second, in an accident, in a stroke. or slowly, in cases of advancing cancer, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, and old age.

The time it takes

Have you told any of them that they should make time to help? Using time for something? It was probably of very little use, no matter who you told it to. Because when you lose control of your life, you also lose the opportunity to use your time. It’s flowing guarded, you can’t do anything to join. You’re out again. you must wait. Waiting for improvement, waiting for more medication, waiting for the doctor or physical therapy or a visit or dinner. If the duvet slips off your toes, and you wake up and freeze until you can’t sleep again, you should wait. Wait for someone new, who can come in and lift the quilt into place.

This is not the time to find help. It is with others. If your fork falls on the floor during dinner at a nursing home, you won’t be able to eat until someone steps in and gives you a new fork. If your stomach can’t accept food that has lumps, you can’t eat until someone remembers to find something for you. And if you’ve always loved buttered toast, but your fingers are useless because of arthritis, you’ll never again get a slice of bread the way you like it, if no one cooks it that way for you.

what you have

Have you gone crazy, have you lost your sense of direction, is it difficult to find your way, or find the right room? Is it scary to fall asleep because you don’t know what you’ll wake up to? You can get medicine. Or help. Be safe before you fall asleep. You have to wait, on both sides.

You can feel scared if no one comes when you ask for help, which is scarier than for a healthy person. Because you have nothing else to put it on. ask for help.

Have you told this elderly and sick person that you will come tomorrow, but you don’t know exactly what time? I guess she sits there all day anyway, it doesn’t mean anything when that happens. But it does. You will wait all day. You might insist on letting Vera out to dinner, in case you come at that time. Or you struggle to understand what you said, and worry all day to know when it will happen, and what you mean.

The elderly, the frail, and the sick need others to fill an hour or the blink of an eye with meaning and calm.

Here and now

Hope? Enjoy? They are not there all the time you have, they are here and now. In getting help. To preserve what has always been important to you. Beautiful shirt. Well groomed hair. Clean teeth. For those who can afford it. If you don’t, it may be because you feel too clean. To go to the bathroom when you have to. To be washed, taken care of, and changed, when they don’t work anymore.

It is important to stick to the here and now. What’s not too big, too far to reach. Because it gives hope, meaning and self-esteem to know that you have a little control. That there is something that can be done. That there is something one can be. One can rest easy. Find peace.

No, I don’t know what remains of all this in our oldest and sickest. I don’t know what’s going on inside the old man at Sunde Hospital who comes in before eight o’clock in the evening, and who the children saw putting a clean sheet over what was soaked with urine. They found them lying in urine and feces, or naked from the waist down. Who are not allowed to wake up until several hours after the end of the night. The night it all started before evening.

He couldn’t take the time to help. If he didn’t have so many hours in the day he never streamed so late. But he also has a here and now, and he also has a life worth preserving.

takes care!

Relatives also have a father who takes care of them, a father whom they can visit and know will be there of some degree of value. So much so that more and more others are left to take care of him.

He lost time. But he has the here and now. Hope, joy and comfort, rest well here and now.

Life in a nursing home wouldn’t be the same without them. It’s inappropriate. It should be in the spinal cord of everyone who nurses, supports and helps. We know it may be a matter of having enough people. Maybe politicians understand that this too should be included, and there should be time for that too – for the healthy ones, the ones who will help.

But it can also be about the attitude towards what it means to be in a nursing home. That you can’t do anything but wait, anyway. A little from time to time is not so dangerous, what time does to a busy person is much more important. Whether it’s helping the person who fell in the next room, or whether it’s ending a weekend conversation with your colleague, before you find a new fork for the person who sits and waits without a fork.

But those who wait lose the value of the present. And maybe that was it for him.