Monday, July 30, 2012

No Exit

So last week I’m visiting a relative in a nursing home, okay? I say good-bye. I head for the elevator. A white-haired man wearing a tie and a crisp new dress shirt arrives at the elevator. He enters the code using the number pad on the wall above the elevator buttons. You have to know the code if you want to take the elevator. That’s how they keep the inmates from escaping. The elevator opens. The man steps in. I roll in behind him. His face constricts with suspicion. “Are you allowed to be in here?” he says to me.

Dammit! This is what happens when I dare go to nursing homes unaccompanied by a walking person! It’s inevitable that someday I’ll visit someone in a nursing home and they’ll never let me out! A few years back I visited a friend in a nursing home and as I was leaving, the rent-a-cop security guard at the front door asked me where I was going. I knew what he was implying. I told him it was none of his damn business where I was going, because I wasn’t. He refused to open the door until a nurse came down and vouched for me.

The guy with the new dress shirt obviously did not have a discerning eye when it comes to cripples. Otherwise he would have known I wasn’t an inmate. Didn’t he see my Dave Brubeck t-shirt? When you land in a nursing home wearing nothing but a hospital gown, they give you a new wardrobe, fished fresh from their rummage sack. But you never get anything as cool as a Dave Brubeck t-shirt. You get sweat pants and washed out, bedraggled t-shirts bearing old advertising catch phrases like I’M A PEPPPER.

And I use a motorized wheelchair, too. That should have been a dead giveaway that I was the kind of cripple who could be trusted riding elevators. The inmates all sat in their standard-issue wheelbarrows, those one-size-fits-nobody hospital wheelchairs.

And if nothing else, the white-haired man definitely should have known that I wasn’t an inmate by the fact that I didn’t’ smell like a horse. In nursing homes, cripples only get two showers a week. If I only got two showers a week I’d smell like a horse.

Before I visit a nursing home alone again, I’d better have my lawyer draw up some sort of notarized affidavit confirming that I am indeed a free cripple, in case I am ordered to show my papers.

Or maybe I’ll always bring along someone who can walk. They don’t hassle me in nursing homes when Rahnee is with me. Rahnee walks funny, but at least she walks, which gives her that certain legitimacy I lack.

At the very least, if I ever visit a nursing home alone again, I’ll first notify my closest, most trusted associates. And I’ll tell them if they don’t hear back from me by sundown, please call the SWAT team.

16 comments:

  1. Can entirely relate. I visited with my mom for about 3 weeks at her asstd living place and I rolled. I constantly got asked if I lived there. I didn't have to prove my freedom access though--even though it constantly confused the management and the residents when I rolled next to my 90 yr old mom who used her walker. Another glimpse into the crip twilight zone...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your adventures in life have that human touch anyone can relate to. The elderly, for example, can be the object of mild persecution and ridicule, from a certain class. One is all too often classed as less than one is, and derision is something one can ignore or explode at.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I never considered this particular problem before, but it really is terrible...kind of like being a freed slave unfortunate enough to get caught in the wrong place after dark...

    ReplyDelete
  4. As I accompanied my Parkinsonian husband to visit his 95 year old mother who was temporarily in the old person hoosegow, I was asked if I were taking my father out for the day as we left. I did not explain but answered, no, he is my husband. I want to carry a smart phone with a three minute instructional video to educate the sound of body.

    ReplyDelete
  5. With the panache of CFS/ME, I deleted my first comment during preview. So, here goes #2, shorter as my stamina fizzles... In about 2006, I visited a young friend in a nursing home; her family had been scared to keep her (they said) but it might have been we not wishing to bother anymore. My husband pushed my wheelchair inside the religious institution nursing home (different than religion I grew up in), fairly famous. The guard gave my husband a "visitor" badge with name. We visited my friend, and when I fizzed in stamina (getting
    there is big haul for CFS/ME), we kissed her and left. Same people staring at elevator doors in hall as when we arrived. At the door, there was a different security guard (that's what he was). He challenged my husband, "Are sure she's not a resident?". Fizzled, freaked, I took out something with my name and address and the argument was ended; we left. I didn't go back. It was my first visit to a nursing home as a wheelchair user. My friend was transferred to another nursing home, further away, and too far for me to go. She died within weeks of being transferred. She was 44. I knew her since she was 9 years old. Her disabling illness was not supposed to be fatal.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I work in a nursing home, so I can vouch that the story is the same here too. As a nurse, I would have been suspicious of the guy in the elevator with you, he could be an escapee.

    And, I'm sorry to say, our residents only get a shower once a week.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am often questioned Are you people allowed out this time of night? I am a college professor. I turn into rochester, I am sorry boss, I don't know what time it is. Not the best approach but an alternative to decking the poor slob,

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. next time tell them you are the first vampire in a wheelchair.

      Delete
  8. Harriet McBryde Johnson had a similar experience when visiting a friend in a nursing home. The guards were convinced she was a free cripple only when someone pointed out that she was wearing a gold bracelet. Had she been an inmate, they reasoned, it would have been stolen long ago.

    Consequently, I planned to wear my best clothes and jewelry to visit a friend in a nursing home in another state; sadly, he died from sepsis and neglect before I could make the trip.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I understand, it happen to me when I went to see my mother one day and I was leaving they stop me and asked where I was going. Thank God my son was with me or they wouldn't allow me to leave.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Sometimes I go outside and read on the side of my building and my aide sits somewhere else or goes inside to do some cleaning, and I tell her to collect me in an hour or I text her when I want to come in. Or sometimes I wait for paratransit in the basement [where the accessible door is] and she waits in the lobby where she can sit.

    Anyway, the idiot neighbors see me alone and say "where's your girl?" I want to smack them!! First of all, they're grown women, not girls!! And they're not "mine", even if I am white, and they are black, I don't OWN them. Thanks for being snarky......when I post snarkiness, I get all kinds of negative comments [which I don't approve -- LOL"

    ReplyDelete
  11. I am a medical student and a wheelchair user. I frequently arrive for teaching, or go into staff areas only to be told that patients are not allowed to be there so I must leave. Sometimes even the stethoscope around my neck and my ID badge is not enough to convince people!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Can't wait to see what happens when u graduate and start walking into patients' rooms. Not unlike a few decades ago when a woman doctor would walk into a patient's hospital room, and the patient would say "where's the doctor, honey?"

      Delete
  12. A couple of years ago I was in the neighborhood right before school let out, so the streets were clear, but the school crossing guards were in position. My aide was walking slow;y about a block behind me and the "walk" sign wasn't on, but the street was empty and deserted. I began to cross and a young crossing guard ran after me, and as if I was a 5 year old, she said "no, no, no" and then she said "are you out alone? You should have someone with you. You shouldn't be out alone" By that time, my aide had caught up and the crossing guard started yelling at her. It was funny seeing my aide tell her off and tell her to mind her own business!!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Mike, I knew before that you were a class act, but your Dave Brubeck tee upped that another notch! (-:

    ReplyDelete
  14. Wow, that's EXACTLY what it's like for a sane person trying to leave the psych ward after visiting a 'sick' friend. Quick!, prove you're not nuts! Terrifying. Logically, someone has to be able to varify that you don't live there and let you out, but you WILL doubt your ability to prove your sanity, and you WILL be afraid to show fear because you know it's crazy to fear they might keep you.

    ReplyDelete