Hello, future old person!
You probably try not to think of yourself that way, but the fact of the matter is that, unless your family has some sort of Highlander gene or your hobby is ramping school buses, you're going to get old. And while none of us like to think or talk about it, there's a good chance you'll spend your final days in a nursing home.
To find out what we have to look forward to, we spoke to Luc Belanger, who spent a decade of his youth living at his mother's family-run nursing home, and "James," who worked in the secure lockup section of a New Zealand rest home, housing patients with dementia and Alzheimer's. They told us about how ...
#6. There Is Sex -- So Much Sex
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Most nursing homes rent you a single room with an adjoining toilet (if you're lucky), so kinky sex dungeons that reek of talcum and communist paranoia are pretty much out of the question, but that doesn't prevent residents from getting their rocks off. And homes don't usually put locks on doors in case of emergencies, so staff members are absolutely going to see it happening. "My mother once walked in on a man motorboating another resident's breasts," says Luc. "What do you do when you walk in on that? Break up their fun? Supply the comical engine noises? Start a slow clap? My mother's response was to freeze in place like a cartoon character, then slowly back out of the room."
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"You should see the speed I can hit when the dentures are out."
Oh, and then there's the masturbation. "One resident would routinely masturbate onto the floor of his room, then make fun of the staff while they cleaned it up. Another was nicknamed 'Horny Smurf' because he used a blue cream on his hands for his arthritis, and one day an employee saw him through his window fighting a bout of hand to gland combat with his blue cream smeared all over his face."
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"I've fought through two wars and three marriages. I wanna get weird, I'm gettin' weird."
But wrinkly old sex is a real problem, for several reasons. One, since residents don't have to worry about getting pregnant, they also tend not to worry about practicing safe sex. As a result, rates of STDs in nursing homes are going through the roof. And then there's the issue of consent.
For instance, our other source, James, worked in a secure lockup -- meaning everyone there is mentally incompetent (and in any couple, one party is even less competent than the other). Caretakers can't allow sexual contact at all in those cases ... which means constantly having to break in and interrupt the act. James once saw an old married man casually spending time with a female who wasn't his wife -- the two would hold hands and eat meals together, and even the guy's wife didn't mind much, because it was all so very sweet and innocent. Until, that is, the staff found him in his new girlfriend's bed, naked and erect.
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In case anyone has yet to catch on: If he's both being sweet and has a penis, this is always the end game.
After they took the guy back to his room and explained that this was not allowed, the man self-righteously insisted he was "always careful about wearing rubbers when playing out of bounds." The guy begged the staff not to tell his wife, and promised he wouldn't do it again (that promise would last all of a week). He then promptly asked to be left alone so he could "relieve some tension."
On occasion, residents might also come on to caregivers. One old woman, Emily, thought she was still a twenty-something running her own B&B and that James was her old bookkeeper, whom she called "Jimmy." As it turned out, Jimmy had also been her "gentleman friend." She'd repeatedly try to kiss James and put her hands down his pants. He humored her, to an extent -- he let her peck him on the cheek, but if she tried to go down south, he reminded her that they were "keeping things hidden."
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"Oh, I know a place you can hide it."
Emily wouldn't trust the rest of the staff (all women) with James. Once, she slapped a nurse and said, "That bitch stole my leather panties and didn't even bother to give them back. I'd kick her out on the street, but that little girl of hers wouldn't survive, stupid tart."
#5. Dementia Patients Are Like Werewolves
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Residents who are mildly demented (yes, that's the official term) are relatively normal for most of the day. They enjoy all the activities that one typically assumes the elderly do: knitting, scowling, walking up and down pathways complaining about their various aches. But when the sun sets, they go nuts. They scream or cry. They have no idea what's happening. They demand to be taken to their rooms (even if they are in their rooms) or start trying to get their cows out for milking ("Sometimes, that's not a euphemism," clarifies James; the patients actually hallucinate cows). The symptoms are collectively called "sundowning."
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Sometimes the best you can do is keep them comfortable and try desperately not to get milked.
There's no one reason why residents sundown. "Much like the rest of elder care," says James, "it's almost impossible to pinpoint the reason someone is breaking. All we can do is treat the symptoms." But if you want to see things get really bad, watch how they react at sundown ... during a full moon.
We're not joking. Once a month, patients suddenly become much more agitated and symptomatic. And it's always the three nights of the full moon. "Shit goes crazy during those nights," says James. The whole lockup fills with howls, so the staff knows the moon's cycle without needing to check the sky or a calendar. It's hard to explain scientifically, but more than a few independent sources (including controlled studies) back up the observation.
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It's possible that they're legitimate werewolves living here who've been hit by elderly hair loss.
It might have something to do with the moon disrupting sleep. And then there's the wacky theory that the Moon is pulling at the water in the human body the same way its gravity grabs the oceans. This could cause issues with the hypothalamus (the weird seahorsey-looking part of your brain), which affects the pineal gland, which dovetails rather nicely into symptoms for sundowning. And if you think their erratic behavior is just a matter of confused old people hilariously shouting at invisible cattle ...
#4. Violence Is Shockingly Common
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Earlier, James treated the sexual advances of a confused old woman as an amusing anecdote -- but only because she didn't pose a physical threat to him. But if a person suffering from dementia gets confused about their surroundings, all bets are off. Maybe they mistake you for an old lover, or maybe they mistake you for a human-shaped monster who has come to eat their liver. In a moment, they can be transformed into ticking dirty bombs filled with hip-bone shards and casual racism. Once, James repeatedly asked a patient to lower his voice, and the guy snapped. He attacked and got so violent that he smashed a window before other staff could restrain him.
"One resident at the home where I grew up," recalls Luc, "was still relatively young, but she was too mentally far gone to take care of herself. On a good day, you could have a secondhand-smoke-filled (but pleasant!) chat with her about her childhood spent singing in a choir. On a bad day, we'd have to call paramedics to come get her because she'd think we were alien invaders coming to murder her (that is not, in any way, hyperbole). And you'd be amazed how strong a tiny elderly lady can be when Predator is real and she's starring in it -- one night when she got violent, it took four paramedics to wrestle her into the ambulance and take her to a special center with higher security."
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Though I suppose it's encouraging to know that Nana's still healthy enough to throw a haymaker if need be.
Once a resident snaps and starts thinking his cane is Mjolnir, the home requests a re-evaluation. Then it's all crossed fingers and hoping he doesn't simply get shuffled to another home with low security or, God forbid, sends a fellow resident to that great big nursing home in the sky.
This is one reason why there are residents who get over-prescribed antipsychotic meds. It's called chemical restraint, and it's illegal as all hell -- but then, so is using a home as a thinly-veiled front for an elderly Hunger Games, and we all know we're anxiously awaiting the next season of that on TLC. Luc told us about his firsthand experience with chemical restraint: "When we first took over the home, most of the residents were low security risk cases that were kept sedated under mountains of pills, because if they sit around staring straight through Matlock all day, all you have to do is dust them off every now and then."
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When dusting the elderly, make sure not to spray Endust in their eyes. To avoid doing
that, try treating them with a shred of human fucking decency in the first place.
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