She needs a Tammy.....my Tammy sets up an annual carnival for her residents to run and take part in, complete with games they can do, straw hats and vests, carnival music, popcorn popper cart, cotton candy, and clowns. All residents are invited to join in the fun, even though the Assisted Living residents are in charge. They decorate walkers and wheelchairs with carnival trimmings. They make and sell crafts during the year to augment the night-time activities budget finally set up by the Care Center. She does MardiGras during that season, and recently had a luau for them. She even got our chef son Kenny to come in and grill the chicken outdoors, and he loved every minute of it. She does all the menu selection, the decorating, and the costuming. She holds painting classes on Friday nights. (She had to learn to paint to do this activity.) For the big activities like MardiGras and the carnival, it means she comes in during the day on her days off so the entire facility can take part. Her normal shifts are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nites from 6 pm until 7 am, so other things they do can be done in the evenings. She is currently setting up an art show by her assisted living residents, complete with frilly hats and white gloves for the ladies and bowler hats and black vests for the gents. There they will sell the paintings they’ve been doing to friends and family to raise money for their activities.
I don’t know why people think the elderly go to bed at 8 and sleep all night. They don’t. She’s always in calming a resident who suddenly wakes in a panic, thinking that they are suddenly in a new place when they’ve been there for months or years. She sits in the chair next to a bed and listens to the same story for the hundredth time. She rubs lotion on dry, cracked feet. She ducks flying walkers from agitated residents, has been in the ER when one resident got mad and clocked her in the face with her cane, (3 stitches in her eyelid) and holds their hands when a resident passes and leaves another resident without a ‘best friend’. She’s no saint - she gets mad and overtired and frustrated. She needs all of Monday and part of a Tuesday to try to catch up on the sleep she loses. She’s no spring chicken...she does this at 50 years old. It started out because as a single mom she wanted the night and weekend differential in her paychecks, and was tired of being called in on weekends to cover for the younger people who called in sick with I-wanna-be-with-my-friends-on-Saturday-nite-itis. She went to admin, suggested her full time weekend overnight shifts, and they accepted. She’s been doing it now for 8 years.
But sometime during that 8 years her job went from just work and a bigger check to a genuine love and respect for her elders in the Center. She took them from ‘waiting to die’ to ‘waiting for Tammy.’ It makes me so sad to read about experiences that are so bad in these facilities when, with a little compassion and imagination, it could be so different. And it doesn’t cost much, either. At first, with the first carnival, there wasn’t even a budget for those kinds of activities. The budget was for music during the day, or a therapy dog or cat brought in to “entertain” the residents, shopping trips, etc.. So the first one involved some saving on her part and a lot of
Amazon-ing for little trinkets out of pocket. It was such a huge hit that she was given a small budget, and her residents dove in and started making quilts to raffle and such for the next year’s carnival. She enjoys herself at work more, the residents love her, and she’s earned the respect of the staff. She could be the rule, not the exception. None of her activities have ever been cited by State when they do their inspections as “unsafe” or “overstimulating”. She brought laughter and hope to people who had little of either. I am so sorry that you are finding just the opposite.
Yes, I brag about her. And as I said, she’s no saint but she’s gone to admin and advocated for her people. Daytime’s activity director doesn’t like Tam much - she can’t compete with her jigsaw puzzles and macaroni necklaces and knows it. But Tam has made it clear that if the day ever comes that I end up in her Care Center, she’s retiring. She says two control freaks in one facility is too much.
Brother and a family friend are doing more research and trying to see if they can at least find a place where the staff won't make her feel like an inconveniently placed throw-rug.
