I’m glad I’m not the administrator of this assisted care living facility. It has to be one of the toughest jobs in the world. We’re talking trying to keep harmony and peace with a very diverse set of patients who come from many different beliefs and cultures, and are not functioning on a sane or rational level.
Several months ago one of the female residents got into a personal tiff with the manager. The resident is extremely thin and loud and quite deeply into dementia. She finished her argument by following the manager down the hallway as she tried to leave, calling her disparaging names like “fat pig” and oinking loudly behind her. Like many of us, the manager is dealing with some weight problems (hers due to medications she is taking) but she is not obese by any means.
She brushed it off with humor, but I know that kind of thing has to hurt, even if you don’t show it.
Last night as I was taking Carolyn to dinner, I heard loud shouting from the dining room, so I turned around and wheeled Carolyn back to the room for a minute. I came back to the dining area, and I see one male resident verbally attacking one of the female employees and threatening her. She was having trouble getting away from his abuse, and eventually some other employees told him to leave. I didn’t see that, but I was told later.
I took Carolyn into the dining room after he left. As he went back to his room he was accusing the employee of blocking the hallway with her drug dispensing cart (she wasn’t—it was against the wall) and it was obvious he was trying to find some pretext to getting her fired.
The the other obvious thing was that he was Republican and she was Democrat. How did I know this? Just a lucky guess. He is an old, white, well-to-do southern man who likes to play with small white children, and she was black, with black children who were helping serve last night.
He objects to her serving him at the table or dispensing his drugs, so she has tried to avoid being the one to do that. But sometimes when the staff on duty is pretty thin, there is no choice.
Not only that, but when she is on the other side of the building, he will follow her and berate her job performance, trying to make a scene and get her fired.
I’ve never quite understood what some of these people want. They object to hiring blacks, they want to get them fired from their jobs, they hate when they get welfare assistance. I suppose they just want them all to die of starvation? Maybe they want to be nicer than that, and just ship them all to nice painless gas chambers?
I stood in the hallway after I got Carolyn seated and watched for him to come back. Sure enough, he soon came by me, and I told him to keep the noise down, that he was scaring the other residents. He came over and took my hand for a handshake, and said there wouldn’t be any problems. I took his hand and squeezed it a little firmer than he liked, and told him I was glad for that. He went on down the hall, did not turn into the dining area, and went all the way around the building to keep from coming past me again.
I stayed in the hallway until I took Carolyn back to her room. He appeared a couple of times, but went back to his room when he saw me.
I should mention that he is very slight and short, and I am much bigger and taller than he is. I’m a lover, not a fighter, but when you are big enough it doesn’t matter.
Solving such issues would be hard enough with everybody in good mental health, but how you deal with non rational cultural biases and overt hostility from people with dementia issues has got to be nearly impossible.
I don’t know the answer.
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