6 Places I Have Worked, Part III
This is the final installment of the Me-me-meme. Thank God.
By rule, I’m supposed to tell you about two more jobs that I have had. Again, this is my website and I’ll do it my way, rules be damned.
For the better part of the last decade-and-a-half, I have worked as a clinical geriatric rehabilitation specialist. My role is to make sure that elderly people entrusted into my care are functioning at their highest level. Some of my patients are long-term care (nursing home residents), but the bulk of my work are senior citizens who have gotten ill, went to the hospital, and need some therapy before returning home.
Over the years I’ve worked for two national rehabilitation companies, one local rehabilitation company, and a privately owned senior housing chain. My roles have been as Rehabilitation Director in several buildings, Regional Manager supervising Rehab Directors, Case Manager, and Corporate Director of Rehabilitation Operations for the private company.
Instead of boring you with job descriptions, I’m going to tell you about a lovely woman I met along the way. She was my favorite resident ever:
Claire. Oh, Claire.
Claire was a completely demented woman who lived in the first nursing home I ever worked in. She couldn’t care for herself at all. She was incontinent. She couldn’t feed herself. She couldn’t carry on a conversation, let alone make her basic needs known.
Claire, however, could walk. And walk. And walk.
The long-term healthcare industry calls someone like Claire “a wanderer.” They wander all over the nursing home. Personally, I feel sorry for these people. I always have a feeling that they are seeking something - something from deep in their past, something in their residual memories. Most wanderers like Claire, I think, are looking for their babies.
Their babies are grown. Many have died of old age. But you dare not tell them that. They don’t know that their babies (or husband or mother) have died, and when you tell them it’s the first time they’ve ever heard it (remember, they are demented and by definition, they live in the past in their residual memories).
I want you to go back and remember the first time you heard about a loved one dying. It was devastating. It is more devastating to someone with dementia, because they are lost and have no one.
But I digress.
Claire was a wonderful old woman. She had an infectious smile but, more often than not, her smile was just to disarm you so that she could wander on past you.
But every now and then, she’d stop and look deep into your eyes. And then she’d smile, punch you gently in the shoulder and say, “You’re a cracker. You’re a cracker-crack-cracker.”
And you knew it. You were “the cracker.” Claire said so, and you told everyone who would listen. Because Claire, somehow and someway - magically, reached through her dementia and touched you. Her heart touched yours.
You were “the cracker.” You wanted the world to know. She had that effect.
I miss Claire. I miss being “the Cracker.”
If you liked that, maybe you will like this:
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