Anyone who has read
any blog post I’ve ever written has likely noticed that I work with seniors
with dementia. Most people don’t know why, but I’m about to get down to the
nitty gritty personal life story as to why. It’s a side of my life I often
don’t talk about, but it’s an important topic that needs to be talked about:
the overall mental health of our aging population.
In 1999, when I was
six, my grandpa was hospitalized for a psychiatric breakdown. I’m lucky enough
that I don’t remember much from his hospital stay. The one story that I have
heard on several occasions: once during a hallucination, my grandpa jumped out
of a window and broke his ankle. He then ran into the parking lot and sat down.
When the hospital noticed he was missing, they sent one police officer to look
for him. They said he was missing. My parents and my mom’s godparents found him
hiding in the bushes from the staff. It was the second time he had gotten out
that night. My mom and my grandma had to sit and watch him 24 hours a day. Unfortunately,
he was waiting to be transferred into psychiatric care but since he had a
broken ankle, he had to stay in a general medical hospital for it.
At first, they thought
my grandpa had late onset schizophrenia. He was extremely aggressive to everyone,
including myself. I remember going to visit my grandparents and him threatening
to beat me with a cane for doing simple things. One Christmas, he knocked my
grandma down the stairs trying to get out in his pajamas in the winter. That
Christmas was a particularly difficult one because my grandma was in one
hospital and my grandpa was in another. Since my mom is an only child, she
quite often was running between the two to care for them.
Eventually, my grandpa
started to develop a tremor, which helped the psychiatrists determine that it
was most likely Parkinson’s disease. Unfortunately, he was still going in and
out of the hospital for psychiatric problems. Eventually, the realized that ECT
treatments were helping him, so they did them once a week. Electroconvulsive
Therapy is extremely high risk and can leave permanent damages, let alone the
amount that my grandpa had.
In December 2007, my
grandpa was doing alright. He was still going for the ECT treatments and seeing
his psychiatrist on a regular basis. It was then that his life had a massive
event happen that would change his mental status forever. My grandma, his wife,
was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. My grandma had a mastectomy then
went through rounds of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. It was particularly
hard on my entire family, but my grandpa took it the hardest I think.
In August 2008, my
grandma went for a follow up after only being in remission for a few weeks. It
was determined that the cancer had spread to her lungs. During that time, my
grandpa also started to have seizures, a side effect from the ECT treatments.
By December, my grandpa had his last and final psychiatric break at home. He
was admitted into the Seniors Mental Health Unit (now Geriatric Psychiatric
Unit) at Ontario Shores for Mental Health Sciences in Whitby.
My grandpa was in
there, while also on the list for long-term care. My grandpa hated it in there,
and it was heartbreaking to see him in such misery. Unfortunately, he was going
downhill a lot faster than he was at home. He was in a wheelchair, lost all
continence. He couldn’t come home.
In August 2009, my
grandma’s cancer spread to her brain. We tried to hide it from my grandpa at
first, knowing that it would be really
hard on him. One day, when we were visiting him, he looked at my mom and said
“I know the cancer spread”, so we told him the truth. We worked really hard to
get them to spend as much time as possible before she passed away, but she was
placed in palliative care in October 2009 and was bedridden.
One thing that Ontario
Shores did for my family, which was great: they had their bus driver bring my
grandpa alongside a nurse to the home twice before my grandma passed away.
In December 2009, my
grandma passed away. The hospital had promised us that my grandpa would have
accompaniment to the funeral by a nurse so our family could mourn without
having to do his personal care. Unfortunately, the week she passed away was the
week that the nurses had mandatory in-service training. We decided that the
best option was going to be to take him to the 2-4 visitation. Therefore, he
wouldn’t be too overwhelmed by the number of people there, it would be older
family friends who hadn’t seen him in a while and the timing was easier for the
family. The morning of, my mom and her godparents went to get him. Him being at
the visitation went well, and he was given the opportunity to say goodbye to my
grandma.
That evening, while we
were at the evening viewing, a nurse decided to tell my grandpa that my mom
would take him to the funeral. Then left a voicemail to let her know, but
didn’t leave her name. No nurses would confess to who it was, and my mom had to
face my grandpa to let him know that he couldn’t go because the day was going
to be crazy.
Christmastime came,
which was an emotional day for the whole family, because my grandma (who was
essentially the glue to our family), had passed away 20 days earlier. When we
went to the hospital to visit my grandpa, a nurse approached my mom telling her
that she was a bad daughter for not visiting my grandpa enough.
My mom hates
Christmas, and I genuinely wonder if this is one of the reasons why she does.
There wasn’t much
involvement from Christmas to October. My grandpa continued to go downhill. We
continued our weekly visits; we would take him down to the cafeteria for lunch,
or bring him something he wanted. He loved Quarter Pounders from McDonalds.
On October 22, 2010,
my grandpa was in the dining room. We aren’t entirely sure what exactly
happened, but according to the nursing staff, he was fine one moment and the
next, he was basically in a coma from choking. Working in long-term care now, I
know that situation should never have
happened. He was unsupervised for too long.
On October 23, 2010,
my grandpa passed away. It is believed that he had Lewy Body dementia, which is
so new that it wasn’t a thing when he first presented symptoms. The only way to
diagnose it is through an autopsy. Our family determined that my grandpa had
been through so much as it was, that we were going to let him rest in peace
instead of being cut open.
This story was not to
make the hospitals that cared for him seem bad. They were great to him. He had
nurses who took fantastic care of him, and treated him like he was their
family. The point of the story was to show much more work the government needs
to invest in our aging population to ensure safe and proper care. Working in
long-term care, I have seen significant improvements since my grandpa’s death.
I can’t wait to see what else the government does in the future for our aging
population to ensure they can age well, even with dementia.
I think the hardest part of losing someone,
isn’t having to say goodbye, but rather than learning to live without them.
Always trying to fill the void, the emptiness that’s left inside your heart
when they go.
-Anonymous
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