Last week I sprang my mom from a memory care facility we’d like to forget. Turns out her dementia was transient, stroke-related. As she started to recover, her cognitively impaired neighbors made her increasingly insane, which I think would happen to any of us if strangers barged into our rooms during the night or if we had a conversation with someone one day, and they didn’t recall it, or us, the next.
Nine months ago when I moved my mom into memory care, I didn’t know she would improve, but one thing I’m learning from the corkscrew adventure of trying to help my eighty four-year old mother is that whatever seems right today may be all wrong tomorrow.
The cuckoo’s nest had seemed promising; in fact, contrary to the institution made famous by Ken Kesey and Jack Nicholson, this place was brand new and fancy. My mom was one of the first residents on the second floor of the three-story faux brick faux apartment building built over a gated garage, the interior decorated in faux Hollywood/Disneyland style complete with a “Main Street” from which the receptionist buzzed you in and made sure no one snuck onto the elevator before buzzing you back out.
However, anyone who has taken children to Disneyland knows it’s not always “the happiest place on earth”; Dementia Disney never, for anyone, ever, merited that moniker, I’m afraid.
On “Main Street” was parked a 1950s convertible next to a faux ice cream parlor and candy store. My daughters tried the candy once. Even though the place was shiny new, the M&Ms had the texture and taste of mildewed vitamins, they reported, mushy milk chocolate inside crumbling sugar coating. This candy was for show, not pleasure.
After the receptionist fobbed the elevator, up you went, already anticipating the claustrophobia, smell of dank soup, and subdued panic of the second floor, to which you were welcomed by a bizarrely sexy elevator voice that dropped several notes for the final “o-r” in “second fl-o-oor,” insinuating that you were about to have the time of your life on Fantasy Island or, perhaps, at the Playboy mansion.
Indeed, when my sister and I first visited the place, the marketing director told us that some of the residents thought they were on vacation at a fancy hotel.
I assure you, they do not, unless fancy hotels lock you in so you can march in endless squares, eternally seeking the exit. It’s not in the Golden State, but Dementia Disney is more “Hotel California” than Four Seasons.
From the walls gaze enlarged images of Elvis, Hank Williams, Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and John F. Kennedy, with his young son peeping out from under the president’s desk. The old black and white photographs look pretty but appear to mean nothing to the people doing laps around the halls or seated on couches near the elevator, jacket on and purse or suitcase in hand, eternally prepared to flee. The photographs seem like an attempt to create a baby boomers’ Disneyland while neglecting to notice that no one—except perhaps family members looking to place mom or dad—is impressed or even interested. The actual residents might as well be folks who live beyond the marketing reach of Disney (if such a place existed) and yet had the misfortune to be plunked into a magical kingdom with human-sized rodents and full-grown women in ballerina princess attire. Bewilderment? Yes. Amusement? No.
Here’s what residents did notice: my border collie/shepherd, patiently nosing each person, looking for crumbs, licking sticky fingers, resting her chin on the wheelchair-bound knees of non-verbal people who looked down at her warm brown eyes, patted her silky black fur, and smiled.
Those who could talk told me about their bygone canine companions, the ranch dogs and tiny lap dogs, the Golden Retrievers and St. Bernards, friends never forgotten.
When my sister and I had come seeking a place for our mom who, post-stroke, declined assistance at her assisted living residence, the marketing director assured us that Dementia Disney was, as advertised, pet friendly. However, she later clarified, none of the residents actually had a pet. She recommended that we get our mom an easycare robot cat to replace her living, loving, eating, pooping and peeing tabby, assuring us that one of the residents had a robot cat and couldn’t tell the difference between it and a real feline.
Months later, I would ask that resident about her “kitty.”
Oh, the little old lady smiled. I don’t really have a cat. My children gave me one of those robot contraptions, and I pretend to think it’s real.
Certainly, no mechanical contraption would delude my mom who has had a succession of pets since birth. Looking at old photo albums with her recently, I realized that the pet affection is genetic: both of her parents, who grew up on farms on tiny McNeil Island, are pictured with a steady cast of canine and feline companions. In fact, a number of the photographs feature just the pet, name and age recorded but nary a human in sight.
My mom’s current cat is on track to become the most expensive nondescript grey tabby in history, given the exorbitant pet deposits and fees the homes demand, but I’m fairly certain that without her feline companion, my mom would not be alive. Case in point: a week after her stroke, when she’d been discharged to the rehabilitation wing at her assisted living residence, I wheeled my mom to her apartment to visit her cat. Mom was feeble and emaciated, but when I returned from the bathroom, she had maneuvered herself out of her wheelchair and onto the couch where she had fallen asleep, her cat contentedly purring on her chest and my dog keeping watch from the carpet. A few hours later my mom opened her eyes long enough to say, “I’m not going back downstairs,” and she didn’t. She and her companions knew what she needed most.
Having spent long weekends with my friendly dog at Dementia Disney for the past nine months, I can say unequivocally that such residences need animals. Therapy dogs; friendly cats; these wonderful creatures intuit human needs and offer unmitigated, non-judgmental and complete warmth and attention and touch. Humans need that; perhaps humans in institutions need that more.
What Dementia Disney had, instead, aside from the huge, ignored, photographs, was a lot of staff, people, bless their hearts, who work long and largely thankless hours with difficult seniors. The staff should be paid handsomely for the kind work they do, but my guess is that they aren’t. Having experienced three such institutions, I’m struck by the fact that wealthy Americans are hiring Ethiopians and Eritreans to care for our parents, and I wonder about the caregivers’ own parents back home in Africa.
I think of those dedicated workers as I recall springing my mom from the cuckoo’s nest, feeling slightly hysterical myself as six or seven people, arms outstretched like zombies in a vain effort to catch us or the elevator, followed us down the eternal hallway, trying to escape.
“Elevator d-o-w-n” said the incongruously sultry voice as the elevator door closed.
Down we went: my dog and I, my mom and, tucked in his traveling case on her walker, Toby, the cat.