Monthly Archive

Feb. 23, 2007

You may be tired of hearing about Hurricane Katrina. I’m no social scientist, but I believe that “tragedy fatigue” sets in after a while. Even the most sensitive of people become immune to bad news. That’s why celebrity shenanigans fill up so much media space so quickly. “Tragedy fatigue” gets the better of us, and we put bad situations out of our mind through mindless, relatively unimportant diversions like who’s entered rehab or shaved her head or fathered a child.

“Tragedy fatigue” happens when bad news seems so pervasive or a situation so overwhelming or a predicament so hopeless.

What’s the cure for “tragedy fatigue?” People like Leslie Knight, an AAHSA regional vice president, her friend Christina Karamesines and our members in the Gulf States. People who don’t give up and who show up to help.

Recently, Leslie visited our New Orleans members for a week to lend a hand and spread hope. She took Christina Karamesines with her. Christina, who is from Michigan, is a massage therapist and is blind. They stayed at Lambeth House, one of our New Orleans members. A great story there of survival, revival and endurance for Scott Crabtree and the residents, staff, volunteers and board.

Christina set up shop and offered free massages to our members for an entire week. Leslie says Christina has quite the healing touch. One of our leaders, John Tieperman of Chateau de Notre Dame and Wyndhoven Retirement Apartments, had suffered a brain aneurysm last September and has miraculously recovered. Leslie said John “looked like a different person after Christina worked on him.”

Leslie’s meetings surfaced the daily challenges of a mammoth recovery: inadequate medical services, a crazy insurance market, slow and uncoordinated government response, preparation for the next disaster. There are stories like Melanie Baker’s, director of nursing (DON) at Chateau de Notre Dame. She’s serving as DON, charge nurse and occasional certified nursing assistant while her organization struggles to find enough staff to meet needs. She couldn’t even find time to make her own massage appointment! All of this occurs in an atmosphere of not knowing the long-term fate of a great city. Eighteen months after Katrina, there are still blocks and blocks of destroyed homes and businesses.

Yet, in the middle of the tragedy fatigue, there is hope and growth. People like Dennis Adams are finding creative ways to capitalize low-income housing. Karen Contrenchis, the Gulf States executive, still works hard knitting together complex political pieces while living in her FEMA trailer. She, with the help of AAHSA staff, is planning the Gulf States annual meeting. The National Caucus and Center on Black Aged worked with Leslie and AAHSA’s Colleen Bloom to help relocate a nursing home resident closer to her family.

Members are getting creative together on recruitment and retention of employees. AAHSA staff like Barbara Manard continue to escort religious groups to the area to muck out one house at a time. Catholic Charities, Wyndhoven, Volunteers of America, National Church Residences, National Baptist Convention U.S.A., Inc. and St. James Place of Baton Rouge are working on their strategic plans. The Association of Jewish Aging Services will hold its meeting in New Orleans in a few weeks to show their support — just like they did in New York after Sept. 11.

And people like Christina will continue to show up in New Orleans with healing hands to “massage” our friends and colleagues through this difficult time. They remind us that tragedy fatigue is an unacceptable state of affairs.

Thank God that for every Katrina we face in life, there are Christinas to help us hope again.

Larry

William L. Minnix, Jr., D.Min.
AAHSA President and CEO

Feb. 6, 2007

We’ve been emphasizing the need to “tell your story.” The story of aging services is not an easy one to tell. Why? The reasons are many. The frailties and indignities associated with age-related conditions are often hard to face. None of us likes to think of our parents growing old, and our culture pays a fortune to makes ourselves think, look, feel and act younger. Good care is inadequately funded, yet the public thinks that government pays for everything, so people face sticker shock when they need help. Our work forces everyone to face their own mortality.

Yes, it’s a hard story to tell, but we must find authentic ways to tell it. That’s why we introduced the “Tell Your Story” theme at our Annual Meeting & Exposition in San Francisco, and we have a follow up theme of “Live Your Story” at our fall meeting in Orlando. We’ve also started a story bank where you can share the great stories you live every day.

We often let others tell our story. On one extreme, slick commercials tell a glossy tale with graying actors who wear adult diapers while they play golf or kiss each other while you guess which one wears dentures.

On the other extreme, negative stories abound in the popular media. Recently, an issue of AARP The Magazine included a story that reflected the sad experiences of a self-defined younger disabled man who had a short stay in nursing home after surgery. He was surrounded by other residents of a more traditional nursing home population and became familiar with all the sounds, smells and personalities associated with frailty in a care setting.

His complaints focused on problems inherent in institutional care — boredom, loss of control, lack of meaningful activities and relationships, a sterile, hospital-like environment and staff with various levels of concern. All of these are the dynamics you deal with every day. They are especially difficult for people like this man, a successful writer with his mental faculties intact, who died at 68 from cancer — not dementia. A truly dismal experience for him, and he had no real alternative. We can all sympathize and empathize with him and others like him that we’ve known in our work.

I remember Gerald, a resident at Wesley Woods when I was there. A near quadriplegic at 30-something due to an auto accident, Gerald lived in our nursing home. He died a couple of years ago. On good days, Gerald appreciated staff, was an active on the resident council, could go on outings in the van and dealt with the sights and sounds of people three times his age with good humor. On tough days, he fought bladder infections, endured impactions and complained anonymously to the state, which sent a survey team to investigate. He tried to leave the nursing home a couple of times for more independent settings, but he was vulnerable to critical clinical problems that other settings were ill-equipped to handle. Our nursing home was home. Staff was family. We all fought the complaints and conditions together. We loved Gerald — and he loved us — in spite of the inherent problems of living together. Wesley Woods was home for Gerald. An imperfect home, but home. This is not a pretty story, a perfect story nor an easy story to tell. But it is real, it is loving and it is essential for the Geralds of the world. You have your Geralds too. Neither glossy nor despairing, but an authentic story of hope and care.

But people like Gerald are not the only story. Areti Staudohar from Riverside Senior Living in Kanakee, Ill. , writes of the birthday party for a wheelchair bound, 104-year-old Lois and her two friends with Alzheimer’s. Areti had rented a red Ford Mustang convertible while her car was in the shop and used it to take Lois and her friends out for a spin. Each resident told stories of their adventurous younger years. Jack, a resident who retired at age 88, told how he became a successful business man in the community after entering it on the road on which they were driving. “Punch it,” Jack yelled, urging Areti to drive faster. She’ll never forget the smile on his face as she did.

“I am sharing this story to help us all remember how much we touch people’s lives everyday,” Areti writes. “In our own way, each of us makes a huge impact on the patients and residents we serve, and they in turn give us back their own priceless gifts.” Neither glossy nor despairing, but authentic.

Or, there’s the story from Penacook Place, in Haverhill, Mass., of an older women with multiple problems, referred by a hospital, demanding daughter in tow. The mother died within a couple of months and the daughter told staff her mother’s last year had been a tough one, but her last days at Penacook Place the best ones of the year. Not high gloss, not despairing, but authentic and reassuring.

For the many people we serve, the story is one of new-found quality of life in spite of disease or other difficulties, finding the shreds of meaning that are still available to the mind and heart. For others, it is helping them make the best of stressful and difficult circumstances in coping with a loved one.

Charles Dickens’ great novel, A Tale of Two Cities, brilliantly describes the same city from two starkly different sets of experiences, making one city seem like two. You and I have the challenge of telling the tale of two cities in the work we do. And we can’t let just one set of experiences — as real as they are — be told. We must continue to make the experience as meaningful as we possibly can for all the residents of “our cities.” So the tale gets better in the telling as we address quality of care and quality of life for an aging population who would rather think they will be perpetually youthful and will never need our services.

And when it works, the tale and the telling can be magical for those we serve and for ourselves. Take this story from Mary Ann Johnson of Lutheran Services for the Aging in Salisbury, N.C. She wrote us about Tim Setzer, a 45-year-old father of three who came to the Lutheran Home after blowing out both knees at a softball game:

Though he had only seen it from his car, Setzer had admired the Hickory campus every time he traveled down Springs Road.

Now, after a 27-day stay there, he admires the inside too.

“I can’t tell you how good people were to me,” he said. “My housekeeper, John, the activity directors, aides, everyone. The place is absolutely spotless and everyone was so kind and helped me so much.”

Strolling the halls (yes, strolling on two good knees) during a recent visit, Setzer couldn’t find enough adjectives to describe the respect he has for the staff and his therapists. “They worked me hard and they pushed me, but they never hurt me,” he said.

Setzer also grew quite fond of the residents, especially a group of men who frequently gathered outdoors on the patio or in the courtyard. They were fascinated by my legs,” he said. ” They’d point and say, “Look there, that boy’s gone and broke both his legs.”

Many of those same residents stopped by his room each day to offer words of encouragement. Setzer credits that encouragement for his recovery. “Seeing their age and how much pain some of them were in, that took all the self-pity right out of me.”

It also changed his outlook on nursing homes. “I still have half a life to go, but if I didn’t, I’d be here. In fact, I’d like to come back here now and then just to rest. I know I’d find nothing but kindness.”

Tim’s visit dispelled all the negative stereotypes he had about nursing homes; and he had plenty. He had a huge extended family and dozens of friends that visited him and came to feel positive and comfortable in the nursing home. His 92-year-old grandmother even enjoyed visiting him. The moral? “We’re not just for old folks anymore” or “Don’t believe everything you read” or perhaps, “Seeing is believing.”

Like a Dickens novel, we have a classic human story to tell. It is a tale of two cities. We must tell both. It is incumbent upon us to improve the conditions associated with the tragic tales and illuminate the tales of hope. Gerald’s life was a tale of two cities. Authentic, tragic, hopeful. You live these stories every day. Tell them!

LarryWilliam L. Minnix, Jr., D.Min.
AAHSA President and CEO

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