City Life - Kirjoitukseni Helsinki Times lehdessä
WHEN I’M DRIVING along Mannerheimintie and stop at a red light, I habitually look at apartment windows and wonder what kind of people live behind them. I invent stories about them; I imagine what they and their homes look like. It’s a fascinating pastime in the numbing city traffic.
Two years ago I worked for half a year as an elderly care assistant for the city of Helsinki’s homecare. Temporary workers like us were not given a bus card nor were we paid to use our own car. Luckily the employer offered us bicycles. I cycled about twenty kilometres a day in life-threatening heavy traffic from one elderly person to another. Always slightly late, because invariably I should have stayed even a minute longer with someone who would literally cling onto the nurse or resign themselves apathetically to their loneliness. You had to leave because there was always another elderly person waiting for me. The situation was totally impossible, torturous for both patient and nurse.
During these six months, I got to know tens of elderly people behind those windows. Now, when I wait at the red light on Mannerheimintie, I look at the window on the fifth floor of a tall building and wonder how 90-year-old Hulda is doing. She is a quadriplegic woman for whom the highlight of the week is a shower on Thursday. Because of her acute pain the nurse had to have detailed knowledge of how to lift and move her. Constantly changing nurses obviously do not have this knowledge and consequently Hulda’s shower was often a cause of terror for her as well as the nurse.
In the traffic along Mechelininkatu there are many familiar windows. 86-year-old Kaarlo, is he sitting at the kitchen table doing crossword puzzles with a nasal cannula in his nose? Or has the disease already taken him to up to heaven? 78-year-old Signe, has she finally been admitted to a dementia nursing home, where she really belongs? The window is dark, but that does not necessarily mean anything. A care assistant comes twice a day to help with her dressing and washing, puts on a diaper and administers the medicine. They have about twenty minutes to do this. In the daytime the meal service delivers supper in a heated package. The safety fuses are unplugged, and the living room door is locked to prevent Signe from setting fire to her apartment or getting lost in it. Her relatives have all died or live elsewhere.
At Ruskeasuo 79-year-old Harri is hopefully enjoying his life. He had the most terrible experience of his life three years ago. In the morning Harri got out of bed and fainted onto the floor. When he woke, he realised that he could not walk or reach the mobile phone on the bedside table. On the living room table, about seven metres from the bed, was a landline phone that he might be able to reach. Harri dragged himself forward by his hands and occasionally fainted. 24 hours later he was in the living room and managed to pull the phone down and press the alarm. “That’s when I learned how to pray,” he told me.
Decision-makers argue that living at home is the best option for an elderly person and must be supported in every way. However, this is not working now and it certainly will not work in the future. People age and there are not enough nurses. The amount of money granted is also inadequate. There are thousands of lonely, unprotected elderly people behind those windows. I no longer look at the windows and invent stories. Now I know.
Translated from Finnish by Satu Heikkinen, ISAI Consulting Ltd.
Two years ago I worked for half a year as an elderly care assistant for the city of Helsinki’s homecare. Temporary workers like us were not given a bus card nor were we paid to use our own car. Luckily the employer offered us bicycles. I cycled about twenty kilometres a day in life-threatening heavy traffic from one elderly person to another. Always slightly late, because invariably I should have stayed even a minute longer with someone who would literally cling onto the nurse or resign themselves apathetically to their loneliness. You had to leave because there was always another elderly person waiting for me. The situation was totally impossible, torturous for both patient and nurse.
During these six months, I got to know tens of elderly people behind those windows. Now, when I wait at the red light on Mannerheimintie, I look at the window on the fifth floor of a tall building and wonder how 90-year-old Hulda is doing. She is a quadriplegic woman for whom the highlight of the week is a shower on Thursday. Because of her acute pain the nurse had to have detailed knowledge of how to lift and move her. Constantly changing nurses obviously do not have this knowledge and consequently Hulda’s shower was often a cause of terror for her as well as the nurse.
In the traffic along Mechelininkatu there are many familiar windows. 86-year-old Kaarlo, is he sitting at the kitchen table doing crossword puzzles with a nasal cannula in his nose? Or has the disease already taken him to up to heaven? 78-year-old Signe, has she finally been admitted to a dementia nursing home, where she really belongs? The window is dark, but that does not necessarily mean anything. A care assistant comes twice a day to help with her dressing and washing, puts on a diaper and administers the medicine. They have about twenty minutes to do this. In the daytime the meal service delivers supper in a heated package. The safety fuses are unplugged, and the living room door is locked to prevent Signe from setting fire to her apartment or getting lost in it. Her relatives have all died or live elsewhere.
At Ruskeasuo 79-year-old Harri is hopefully enjoying his life. He had the most terrible experience of his life three years ago. In the morning Harri got out of bed and fainted onto the floor. When he woke, he realised that he could not walk or reach the mobile phone on the bedside table. On the living room table, about seven metres from the bed, was a landline phone that he might be able to reach. Harri dragged himself forward by his hands and occasionally fainted. 24 hours later he was in the living room and managed to pull the phone down and press the alarm. “That’s when I learned how to pray,” he told me.
Decision-makers argue that living at home is the best option for an elderly person and must be supported in every way. However, this is not working now and it certainly will not work in the future. People age and there are not enough nurses. The amount of money granted is also inadequate. There are thousands of lonely, unprotected elderly people behind those windows. I no longer look at the windows and invent stories. Now I know.
Translated from Finnish by Satu Heikkinen, ISAI Consulting Ltd.
posted by Tarja Tallqvist at 18:20
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