Gertrude

            Her name is Gertrude, but we like to call her Gertie.  She is a 94 year-old, 142-pound woman who resides in a long-term care facility, a nursing home.  She has all the character traits that come to mind when you picture your typical nursing home resident.  She has short white-gray hair that she has permed and hairsprayed religiously on a weekly basis.  Her rolling walker has basket attached, which she keeps stocked with tissues and hard candies, the later of which she will never hesitate to give to you.  She will always try to take care of others before she does anything for herself.  She has been knitting the same rainbow scarf since I started working with her over a year ago.  She loves to tell stories of her youth.  Oh, and she will call you every name in the book before she finally comes to the right one.

            Gertie hasn’t always been the elderly woman I have grown to know and love.  She regales me with stories of her youth.  Gertie grew up the youngest child, with 4 older sisters.  In fact, this is how she remembers my name.  When she forgets, she starts naming all her sisters.

            “Evelyn?  Fay?  Doris?  Laura?”  She stops, knowing she has named the corresponding sister with whom I share a name.  This, of course, leads into a story about her older sister Laura.  Laura was the oldest of the 5 girls, and favored her youngest sister very much.  In their youth, Gertie would beg Laura to let her help with the chores.  Laura would teach her how to do housework, protect her, be her confidant.  She always smiles when she thinks of Laura.

            At the age of 19 she married her love, Henry.  They had 5 beautiful children, only 4 of which made it to adulthood.  Gertie is very proud of her large family, often indulging any ear willing to listen about how her daughters and some of her granddaughters are nursing.  She brags about how some of them care for children with cancer; how they are such warm souls to see such heartbreak day in and day out.  She talks about her great-grand babies in California.  Her walls, her bureau, her nightstand are all littered with pictures of a beautiful smiling family.

            I don’t think she sees very much of her family now that she is in a nursing home, but it doesn’t seem to bother her.  As her dementia progresses she talks to the pictures of her family as if they can actually hear and converse with her.  Even though she is developing these little quirks, she is still one of the lucky ones.  She is able to walk, just with a walker, not with someone trailing her around to make sure she doesn’t fall or try to walk out the door.  She is able to wash, dress, toilet, and feed herself, unlike many of her companions. 

            However, those same attributes that make her lucky, also, in a sense, make her unlucky.  She is more aware of her surroundings.  She is aware that the people around her do have to be fed, changed when they inevitably soil themselves, and have very free will.  She sees all this, yet there is nothing she can do about it.  This is where Gertie’s nerves get the best of her. 

            “I’m just a bundle of nerves,” she confesses.  “That’s what the doctors used to tell my mother.”  And its true.  She struggles with the frustration of being forgetful, but not forgetful enough to forget she is forgetting.  She gets anxious when its getting close to bedtime and she hasn’t been given a shower yet.  She gets all worked up when she has a confrontation with other residents about the amount of bingo cards they are allotted.  She gets agitated when she needs something and she can’t find an aid to instantaneously cater to her every whim.  It drives her absolutely up a wall when she sees a fellow resident at the nursing home getting made fun of.

            Gertie lives for the activities they have at her home.  Boy, do they have a lot of activities.  Daily, from right after breakfast to right before dinner, her days are jam-packed.  Activities can range from arts and crafts to exercise to trivia to tai chi. She gets to play bingo weekly, getting a quarter for every game won.  She makes little decorations they lay among the photos of her family, different ones for different holidays or seasons.  What Gertie enjoys is when they have people come in who sing and play instruments, sometimes they even have dancers.

            Although Gertie can claim many friends at her home, she only has one close friend, her roommate.  Her roommate’s name is Maria; she is a 89 year old who has Parkinson’s Disease.  Maria is one of the residents at the home that is unable to groom, feed, or toilet herself.  She relies solely on the people employed by the home, and Gertie makes it her job to ensure Maria is being well taken care of.  They spend evenings in their room chatting before they go to bed.  As Maria gets tired, Gertie goes off to find someone capable of helping her into bed.  They are always looking out for each other.

            Despite her medications, Gertie’s dementia is progressing.  She is becoming more and more forgetful.  She is loosing her filter that allows her to distinguish between right and wrong.  More often she can be seen with her shirt on backwards, or holding her pictures up to watch TV.  Despite those ever increasing moment where her mind is elsewhere, I will always remember Gertie as she asks me to tuck her in at night.