Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Do charts for pictures to match a name?

I catch a glimpse of First Child this morning! They came early for their session, and I was just about to leave for my own clinical site. I didn't get to talk to her though. She looked very good and happy.
Today was a fairly tough day at clinic. We had our first session at group and tried out my 'nursing home' voice...loud and deep...did not go so well, and I admit this as a weakness, but one that I can conquer, hopefully without getting larygnitis. We saw a new client today as well. E. was sick, so it was just M. and myself as student clinicians. We walked into the client's room with our supervisor, she introduced us, and asked if she was so-and-so. The client started shaking, literally shaking and looked like she was almost going to cry, saying that how nice it was for us to come visit, etc. She grasped our hands, hugged and kissed us (like relatives do, lah). She then appeared to be looking for something, glancing around the room, and did a very cool thing (to me...cause I seldom see any client do this by themselves): she verbally cued herself for the object she was looking for by saying its first letter. it turned out she was looking for her cup that had her name on it. We assumed she was who we were suppose to assess, but as it turned out, when she found her cup, we found out she was the roommate of the client we were suppose to meet...and we very well then could not just leave as she had been so emotionally involved when we came into the room. By the conversation that followed, it was obvious she had a form of dementia and was probably at the stage where one begins to forget personally related information (like her name, who's who in family pictures). I haven't thought much of the social side of living in a nursing home, from a personal standpoint. But today I did. I was kinda scared, mad and very sad to see this side of the nursing home, where a resident might not get many visitors or any at all, having all the time in the day to do nothing. Many of the residents here talk about waiting for family, refusing to leave the room just in case they miss a visitor, waiting to return to a home (they no longer have), not being able to see so-and-so, etc. It's heart breaking, the physical response I saw today was the most extreme response I've seen yet. Sure, it could be her dementia in play that influenced her behavior as well, but I think it's more than that.

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