I've worked in several nursing homes. A couple examples about the people living there from the top of my head: There was this one old lady, +5 years bedridden, had a stroke or something so she was not all there anymore. Got fed through a PEG tube. For some reason this made her emit huge amounts of slime from the back of her throat, and she was constantly aspirating in that slime. Her days consisted of her staring at the ceiling of her room and constantly coughing up her own slime to the point of vomiting. This because her loving children didn't want to stop force feeding her. This other old lady had a severe dementia. Every night i went to her room she had her legs hanging from between the edges of her hospital bed. The floor was often wet, because she had cried so much. Most of the things she said didnt make any sense, and she was very slow to understand anything said to her. She was constantly fearful and confused. Every time i changed her diapers she shrieked from the top of her lungs and begged me not to do something. Seemed to me like she had some traumatic background and she thought she was being assaulted.
And you know what? I didn't really care about them. Not meaning i would do my job poorly, but i just did it, mostly without thinking or feeling anything for them. The impolite thing nobody really wants to say out loud, is that these can hardly be seen as people anymore at this point. Meaning, most are so out of their minds in one way or another that they are practically vegetables, you don't look at them and instantly see yourself, you have to focus and conceptualize. It's more like "To think that this dried up old poopmachine here was once a person like me. Absurd. I wonder what they were like"
I've worked with young people in my past too, people who've had permanent, severe physical injuries, for example from car accidents and violence, ive worked with people with birth defects, cerebral palsy etc. These people were mentally mostly here (although usually somewhat disordered), but their bodies were broken. Working with them made me feel awful. It was quite impossible for me to look at them and not see myself. I could not do that kind of work for a long time, my inability to help them in any way made me severely depressed.
With the old people it's nothing like this. I just don't see the connection most of the time, unless I concentrate and think about it. I'm not acutely, painfully aware of the fact that this here is a human being in pain and discomfort. There is usually nothing I can do for them, so it's not even worth trying to see it this way. I'm whistling and thinking about what to get for lunch while listening to them shrieking or gurgling on their own vomit. It's not lack of empathy, really, it's just that there is simply too much distance between us for my mirror neurons to activate.
If you know what's best for you then never let yourself get to this point. You will learn to know what it really is to be invisible. If you get dementia at some point it's better to kill yourself, no matter what anyone thinks of it. Your children, grandchildren, they don't know anything. The society and the people hardly give a fuck about the suffering of people they can still recognize as people, as their peers and mental equals. They care even less about those who they can't. There are no golden years, at best it's really uncomfortable towards the end, at worst it's hell beyond anything you can imagine. And every now and then, that hell takes a loooong time. Think 10 years lying in your bed staring at the ceiling, mentally slowly becoming one with the mattress.
And you know what? I didn't really care about them. Not meaning i would do my job poorly, but i just did it, mostly without thinking or feeling anything for them. The impolite thing nobody really wants to say out loud, is that these can hardly be seen as people anymore at this point. Meaning, most are so out of their minds in one way or another that they are practically vegetables, you don't look at them and instantly see yourself, you have to focus and conceptualize. It's more like "To think that this dried up old poopmachine here was once a person like me. Absurd. I wonder what they were like"
I've worked with young people in my past too, people who've had permanent, severe physical injuries, for example from car accidents and violence, ive worked with people with birth defects, cerebral palsy etc. These people were mentally mostly here (although usually somewhat disordered), but their bodies were broken. Working with them made me feel awful. It was quite impossible for me to look at them and not see myself. I could not do that kind of work for a long time, my inability to help them in any way made me severely depressed.
With the old people it's nothing like this. I just don't see the connection most of the time, unless I concentrate and think about it. I'm not acutely, painfully aware of the fact that this here is a human being in pain and discomfort. There is usually nothing I can do for them, so it's not even worth trying to see it this way. I'm whistling and thinking about what to get for lunch while listening to them shrieking or gurgling on their own vomit. It's not lack of empathy, really, it's just that there is simply too much distance between us for my mirror neurons to activate.
If you know what's best for you then never let yourself get to this point. You will learn to know what it really is to be invisible. If you get dementia at some point it's better to kill yourself, no matter what anyone thinks of it. Your children, grandchildren, they don't know anything. The society and the people hardly give a fuck about the suffering of people they can still recognize as people, as their peers and mental equals. They care even less about those who they can't. There are no golden years, at best it's really uncomfortable towards the end, at worst it's hell beyond anything you can imagine. And every now and then, that hell takes a loooong time. Think 10 years lying in your bed staring at the ceiling, mentally slowly becoming one with the mattress.
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