ABUSE @ JURA CARE!

What happens behind closed doors?

What happens when you leave your Loved one with us?

What happens?

No one speaks about this, ever.

It is lived through, endured and quickly forgotten to make space for patience and soft love.

Abuse comes in many forms, you know, here is a couple of them.

Physical.

Verbal.

Emotional/Psychological

Neglect

Chemical.

Sexual

Financial.

Hair is raising when you hear those words.  How can you place your Mother in a Home? How can you trust the carers and staff?  How will you sleep at night? Every time you visit you will scrutinize her room, her arms and legs to look for signs. Is she hungry, is she bruised, is she depressed and crying?  Where are the chocolates I bought last week for my Mom? Who stole it?

All these thoughts are your nightmare!

But behind the closed doors inside the walls of Jura Care, abuse is very much a part of our everyday lives.

For years I’ve been sharing my life with my people at Jura Care and I will share what we never tell anyone.

My first encounter was with my beloved Buddy, my first resident.  The night he thought I was an intruder and wanted to call the Police on me to defend him against this person in his “house”.  He got hold of the fork he used for supper and chased me!  He couldn’t hear and he couldn’t see me for who I was.  I tried to escape the stabbing fork and eventually jumped through the window and landed in the rose bed. I could wait there, keeping an eye on him through the window. I could see his mood changing eventually and how the happenings of the evening were slowly fading.  After some time, I could return to be greeted by a very grateful man who missed me.

My experiences are too many to tell but I will try and share.

My first sexual abuse encounter, one of many thereafter was with a very gentle and kind man.  As you all know, hygiene is the most difficult part of our jobs, male and female.  And we need to get them showered and washed and dressed up and smelling nicely before the family is visiting.  Uncle G, I will call him.  Highly educated and a groomed businessman he was.  He needed a shower, and the staff tried everything with no results, so it was my turn to give it a go.  I told him very politely that it is time for a nice warm shower and that “we’ are going to take the shower. Big mistake. No resistance at all and I was quite proud of myself of setting such a nice example to my staff. I helped him to take off his clothes. He carried on with the rest as I was fetching his towel and fresh clothes around the corner in his wardrobe.

I walked into the wet room ready to give him a hand.

As he turned around from the basin when he heard my voice, one of the things greeting me, was a very big smile!

I got such a fright! I turned around and ran for the door. As I turned the door handle to escape, I realized all my staff waiting and the fool I was running away! I took a deep breath and walked back and found everything big still around. I politely and gently just turned his back to me facing the basin and opened the cold water.

The overall sexual abuse never stopped for all these years. We are touched, probed, squeezed and hugged and we will just smile and change the conversation or get out of the situation if we can. It is only reported to your Nurse as an incident, but we carry on going back and helping the person not knowing what they are doing.  And sometimes we learn how to avoid a situation, or to get out of one, but we know this is part of what we are doing.

One morning I also had to step in and help the staff to shower a gentle giant who always refused to take off his underpants. He never resisted in us helping him to take of any of his other clothes, as long as we don’t touch his underpants. When I told his wife of many years, she giggled and said that she can’t believe he doesn’t want to take off his underpants. All these years he never had a problem to drop them.

I tried to position myself nicely behind him to escape a slap or something as I helped him into the warm shower. I slipped my hands to his hips to slide down his underpants. The next second, faster than you can even imagine, he swung around his huge body and gave me an uppercut in my stomach.  I knew I was in trouble. I tried to get out of his way gasping for air. I reached the neighboring room’s bed and lied down trying to get my breath back.  Shock, panic, fear and the physical pain of being without air.  No one saw me and I kept still, fighting back the tears.  When I got back my breath and composure, I showered him with his underpants on but realized I have to make a plan very quickly to safe my staff from physical abuse.

That night I cut open all his boxer shorts and sewed Velcro on the sides. From then on, we could easily pull them off without him even realizing where his underpants have gone.

The other day a lady didn’t want to go to the bathroom. We asked her nicely to go, because it will help her emptying her bladder so much better to help her to get over her UTI.  She kept on refusing. We tried again later. No one succeeded. Her favorite carer who is pregnant went over to her to help her.  As she helped her to get up gently, the lady wriggled her arms to get out of the carer’s hands.  Looking her in the face, she said that she will not go, and that she wishes her baby to be dead.  We were all stunned. Even I didn’t have words to console a shocked mother to be.  Somewhere we learn to put aside our own feelings, to listen but not to hear, to feel but not to make it a part of us.  Just sometimes it is a bit too hard and we suffer silently.

And then I have to take a sick person to the hospital.  Tiny frail women.  What harm can she do? What pain can she inflict?

As I helped the carer to get her into my car, she gets hold of the soft skin of my underarms and she pinched.  Not because I made her feel unsafe. She had the chance to come close to my body. She grinned when I winced in pain, trying not to show her my pain.  She smiled and said…” Good for you Bitch”   But then she was safely buckled up next to me. We drove off and she asked me politely to switch my car radio to radio 5, which I did.  We drove off listening to the radio as if nothing happened.

At the hospital I placed her in her wheelchair and rolled her to the entrance.  She called me names that flew all around me, making people in the parking area staring at us.  But as I held her hand when she was so afraid for the needle the Nurse stuck in her, she thanked me with a sincerity because I am always there for her.  That always stir my inside, the raw true emotional connection with a person lost in herself, lost because of this disease.

Spit dripping off my glasses, as I try to help her getting comfortable in bed.  ” Your fucken cunt!” vibrates through the ward as I focus with the help of my Carer to clean her up, and to leave her warm and snuggled up in the bed.  And tomorrow I will be back with her favorite Lindt chocolate, and maybe I will see her gentle smile of thankfulness for that moment or not.

I only share this with you, to maybe sometimes look at us, carers a bit softer.  To give us the benefit of the doubt. To not accuse us of stealing, but to ask before the accusation.  Not to doubt us because of a bruise, but to wonder where all our bruises are.  Just a bit of kind understanding for my staff when we didn’t shave your Loved One the way you want it, or if he is not wearing the right socks matching his shoes.

Just a bit of kindness…..