Leave the gun take the cannoli (9)

A wave of guilt washed over me as I sat in the  New York Cares office listening to   Ryan  Walls and Executive Director Gary Bagley  extol the virtues of volunteering with senior citizens.   The projects that New York Cares provide to hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living centers are a Godsend to the lonely and fun for the volunteers who sing,   record life stories and play parlor games with their  surrogate grandparents.   Even though volunteering among the octogenarians makes me feel young, I  rarely make the time to do it.

I drop in regularly at the Sparks Of Life project at Methodist Hospital to socialize over breakfast with Alzheimer patients.  Team Leader Barbara Blechman always bakes a diabetic friendly coffee cake and goes out of her way to pair me up with an Italian or Spanish speaking patient. The Methodist staff is always pleasant and smiling.  The posters on the walls of old movie stars and music from the CD player stir up memories and keep the conversation flowing.  Time flys at this project.

I always feel a little blue when I leave the beautifully decorated halls of Methodist.  I think of my mom who is in another  facility across town that has all the amenities of a Turkish prison.      

I used to volunteer at NYU Rusk Institute until I had a panic attack during a Bingo game.  Every time I would turn the wire cage,  all the little bingo balls would fly all over the place.  I feared that the lady in the corner who survived Auschwitz and a stroke would go down with B11 embedded in her cranium. Team Leader Allan Sih tried replacing Bingo with Trivial Pursuit and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire   but senility proved to be an obstacle.  

Of course, my favorite hospital is Lutheran Medical Center in Sunset Park. Even though the ER is always busy the staff is always courteous and patient.  Everyone there greets you with a smile.  The nurses treat everyone like royalty.     Whenever my mom is a patient there, I sleep well.  I know that there is always someone to feed her and talk to her.  And she really loves the “Musicians On Call” who  sing and play guitar in her room.  I always feel sorry for her when she is discharged and sent back to her rehabilitation warehouse in the high rent neighborhood.  

 I visit my mother in her little death panel room everyday.  I used to bring her a can of Ensure and  gelato until  she was put on a feeding tube.  The walls  in here room are gray.   Everything I  brought in to brighten the place up has been stolen along with her rings and a plastic bottle of Holy Water.  On a good day most of the people who work there are rude. 

 Last week, they got my mom out of bed for a special event in the day room.  All of the residents were treated to ice cream.  My mom wasn’t allowed to have any ice cream.   She sat there watching and crying.  She was still crying that evening when I arrived.

If an elementary school teacher excluded one child from an ice cream event and made that child watch, she would be charged with causing unnecessary mental stress and emotional abuse.  Nurses and nurses aides are part of the same union as teachers and para professionals so I wonder why they aren’t held to the  same standard.             

 But, as Bob Dylan once sang “it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why” so I’m devoteding all my free time to asking the appropriate authorities to create a better monitoring system for end of life care.             

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 6:43 am and is filed under Advocating for Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.