Caring For Lucille

I chased an elderly woman around all day! Dementia has stolen her mind, but her body is surprisingly strong. This can actually be dangerous. Imagine someone with 90 years' experience and a limited comprehension of consequences moving at a high rate around appliances and stairs.

This is a story I wrote after a challenging shift this summer

When introducing Lucille to the shower aid sent by Hospice yesterday, I brought up a joke we shared over a year ago when I last did respite care for her. I put my hand on her shoulder and said "Lucille does not believe these are the 'GOLDEN years'!" She rewarded that with a laugh. I know she doesn't remember our joke, but there was some comfort and familiarity in the words.
After the shower aid left yesterday, Lucille and I had a day of chasing around the house as she went from couch to bathroom to bed to other couch to chair to outside and back to bathroom... literally changing locations every 20 minutes all day. Shoes on. Shoes off. Pants off. No reason. Pants back on, finding way to the living room again. Confused. She wanted to go home. I said "I absolutely understand that. I get homesick too." You wing it, sometimes. When I would give her choices, she would say that she ddn't know what "they" had in this place. I knew that she often gets very angry at her caregivers for making her do something she doesn't want to do, so when I asked her something and she started that jaw clenching, eye rolling thing I would laugh and say "It was just a suggestion! Don't roll your eyes at me! You get to do what you want, today!" and she'd relax and smile.
As the day wore on, her body began to cooperate less. The left leg loses touch with her brain and she has trouble lifting her foot to walk. This distresses her, and she looks down at her leg like it doesn't belong to her. I stand behind her and give her foot a "jump start" with my foot, giving it a little lift for each step. That works fine. For the 20th time she says "Do they have a bathroom around here?" and for the 20th time I say "Yes! You have two choices. There is a commode right here, and there is a toilet in the bathroom. Let's use the commode - because it's so much easier to get to." She studies both, and then nods and goes to the commode. Sometimes she remembers to pull down her pants, and sometimes she doesn't. If she doesn't, I gently say into her ear "Hang on, here - let me help you get these down". There is somthing called 'Cueing' that you do - and my fellow caregivers will understand. Since Lucille's brain is really shot, by the end of the day it came to actually guiding her hand to do what I asked. "Put your right hand here. Great. Now step to the side like this. Perfect!"
At about 9:50 I had assured her that the men who had just been in her room (in her mind) were gone, and that the man they told her about, "George", might have had the same illness her other caregiver did. (The men had been there telling her George was ill and had to go home. She was distressed that they had been in her room, and also had no idea who George was.)  I gave her the nighttime meds, which of course she did not recognize, nor did she know who I was, and tucked her in for what I hoped would be the final time for the night. From 7pm until 9:50 I believe she was up every 10 minutes if not more. Shift change!