We’ve been told lately that most of the COVID 19 deaths have been occurring in nursing homes. The elderly residents have pre-existing conditions that make them easier prey for the virus. I think we should also consider that perhaps those who succumb are ready to go and are making use of this opportunity. Death is not necessarily a sad event for the participant, though it is for the rest of us.
In my two years as a nurse, I worked in a nursing home, called a “convalescent hospital”. I was an L.V.N. (Licenced Vocational Nurse) and each day I pushed my cart around giving medications to all the residents and supervising and helping my five aides as they fed, washed, dressed, and generally cared for the elderly folk.
I got to know many of the residents. Some pushed their wheelchairs around and conversed with me as any younger or well person might. Others were not able to converse and my aides would lift them into their wheelchair and position it in the open area where they could see other residents and watch activities. Still others were suffering from such advanced dementia or Alzheimer’s that they were unable to sit in a wheelchair. They were therefore made clean and comfortable in their beds and an aide would check on them regularly and turn them to their other side to prevent sores from forming on their hips from prolonged pressure against the bed (bedsores).
One of those patients, whom I’ll call Pearl, had been a resident in this hospital for many years. I hadn’t seen anyone visiting her. It had been so long since she walked anywhere that her legs had become stiffened in a straight position. She never spoke and gave no sign of hearing anything said to her. But I could sense that she was still partly in her body, not completely out, and that she could hear what I said. So each day when I checked on her or did some of her care when the aides were busy, I talked to her. It was just small talk like what’s for lunch today or how Rosemary (a long-time ambulatory resident who liked wandering around) was on her way to this room, or how the tulips were blooming now in front of the building. Her eyes were open and tracked some of my movements but she made no response.
I learned from the Administrator (I’ll call her Susan) that Peal’s husband, John, was also in a nursing home and it was nearby. He’d been there about as long as she’d been in this one and apparently also had Alzheimer’s. They’d been married for about sixty years and I wondered if they still communicated intuitively. One day we got word from that facility that he had died. Susan called me into her office to get my opinion: should we tell Pearl about his death or would that be fruitless as she wouldn’t hear us or wouldn’t recall that she had a husband? I thought we should tell her. I thought Pearl had a more active mind than most people realized and if she remembered him and still loved him, she’d want to know, sad as it would be.
We both went to Pearl’s room and in an official sort of way, Susan told her about John’s death. Pearl made no response, just lay on her back, looking at the ceiling. Susan went back to her paperwork and I talked a little to Pearl as I tidied her bedside table and then turned her over to her left side, facing away from me.
The following day, after giving all the medications out, I went to see how Pearl was doing. She was lying on her right side, facing me, and had not yet been tidied up after breakfast. For her comfort until the aide came to dress her, I started to turn her to her left side. There’s a technique to that so it isn’t hard to do, especially for a slim person like Pearl and I got my arms under her, chatting softly about all the birdsong I’d heard as I walked from my car this morning. As I was turning her over to her left side, she died. She softly left her body for the next world. I finished positioning her and then stood there for a few moments in acknowledgment.
Then I went to Susan’s office. “Pearl just died, Susan.” We went back to her room and Susan pulled the bedding up over Pearl’s head. “I’ll contact her family and start making arrangements, Jen. You continue with your job,”
I think Pearl was waiting for John to go before she went. In some silent way, she’d been caring for him, watching over him “till death do us part”. Might she not have been glad to finally leave this world and rejoin him, both of them floating free of their Alzheimer’s?