BEING PRIVATE (Nursing Home Life part 5)

The first thing I lost when I moved to Laurier House was my privacy. Funny, but this came as a bit of a shock. We hadn’t been here more than a couple of hours when privacy first reported itself missing. I needed the bathroom, which was in David’s bedroom, segregated by a sliding door. I went into the bedroom, entered the bathroom, slid the door closed and searched for the lock. Not finding it, I searched again. There was no lock. “Of course there is no lock, you idiot,” said a small clear voice in my head. “This is a nursing home! Staff have to have access in order to help the patients. Staff need access in order to wash their hands. Prepare yourself to live without locking the bathroom door.” Learning to live that way put a whole new meaning on the idea of hurry. It was important to always be on guard. Lingering on the toilet became a luxury I could not afford. I refined the process of rapid elimination, and I never failed to listen carefully when I went. Bathing was an occupation I carefully scheduled by setting my alarm after observing the staff activities and projecting the times when they were least likely to pay us a visit. Before I continue, I must stop to explain that nobody who works at Laurier House ever enters a suite without knocking. There is respect for privacy, in an institutional sort of way. They knock, tap tap, and then they enter. It is the same for all of them, RN’s, LPN’s care givers, housekeepers, managers, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, dieticians and even doctors knock, tap tap, and then they enter. If they don’t see you in the living room, they look for you. The knock is not a request for permission, but merely a warning. One second you are alone, and the next second you have company. How do you tell the difference between a visitor and a Laurier House staff member? Visitors wait for permission to enter. In a place where very few residents can get up to open the door, this is the way it has to be. I live at Laurier House, but technically I am not a resident. In institutional terms I am a companion to David who is a resident. In life terms, I am a wife. We have a kitchenette, a living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom that has no lock. Staff come in and go out when we are playing bridge, celebrating a grandchild’s birthday or watching a movie. I can’t say that this time in an institution hasn’t changed me. Clearly it has. Now that we’ve been here for nineteen months, my memory of what it means to have privacy has dimmed a bit. My passion for playfulness has also dimmed. Still there are times when my old silly self surfaces. On nights when the impulse to spontaneity overwhelms me, I wait until the staff have repositioned David, give them a few minutes grace in case they want to return for some item they left behind, then make a mad dash out of my bedroom, through the living room, into David’s bedroom and into the bathroom with more skin showing than I would want anyone other than David to see. I leave the sliding door open, just to prove to myself that I have the power. Then I relish the victory once I’m back in bed. Like all people who gradually become accustomed to institutional life, I lose track of the ways in which I have accommodated to its peculiarities. The other day, when one of the nurses asked me if I get tired of having so many people come in all day long, I had to think for a moment in order to understand his meaning. Was he suggesting that I wouldn’t want to see him? Of course I wanted him there. He was helping to look after David. But then it occurred to me that he was wondering if I felt invaded. “Privacy was the first thing to go when I came to Laurier House,” I told him. “I just try to keep my clothes on.” He laughed. I laughed. It seemed like a laughing matter. Laughing about this comes easily now. But I can’t say it always did. In the first few months of our time here the lack of privacy irritated me, simmering just below the surface. The simmer reached the boil the day after David’s first health crisis at Laurier House. As simmering feelings so often do, it boiled over on an unsuspecting victim. The health crisis developed about three months after we moved in. It was late in the evening, so we didn’t consult the physician who regularly visited David on Friday afternoons. The nurse followed a protocol and we left in an ambulance. I returned to Laurier House late the following evening. David’s fever remained high, and he was still in excruciating pain, but he was finally moving from the Emergency room into a bed on a ward. His brother had come to stay with him so that I could go home and get some sleep. It felt strange to be spending a night in a nursing home without David, but my clothes were there along with most possessions that were important to me. Home is where your stuff is. As I walked down the vacant hallway, stilled with the sounds of night, pausing only to let the staff know I had returned, a tantalizing thought seized my exhausted mind. “David is gone. Tonight I am an ordinary person at home. I will have complete privacy,” I said to myself. “I will take a bath without worrying that somebody will come in. I will even leave the bathroom door open just to prove that I can.” And so it came to pass that I ran the bath, turned off the water, and was just about to step into the tub when I heard a friendly “Hello!” It was not coming from the outer suite door. With the water running I had missed that first one. It was right at David’s bedroom door, and it was not one of the nurses, but rather David’s doctor, our regular Friday afternoon visitor. He had done what he always did, knocked and entered. What choice had I but to scramble into clothes at lightning speed and meet him in the kitchen? There was, at that point, an opportunity for me to respond in kind to a gesture of genuine concern, for it was only concern that had brought him through the door. He had come to Laurier House for some other reason and had taken an extra moment to ask me about David. But the conversation we might have had was doomed from the start. For I was angry, the way you are angry when you have been robbed, perhaps not solely of a peaceful bath, but of so many other things you thought would be yours. And I was tired, too tired to hide it. He, to his credit, despite the lateness of the hour, was able to see past that.