Nursing Home Blues

So surprise surprise! My mother is not happy in her nursing home. We're happy she's there but she's not. She hates it. I do her laundry so I see her twice a week. Once to pick it up and once to drop it off. I told her that she has become an errand... she didn't like that. When I see her I always visit for a bit which was one of the reasons why we put her some place so close to me. She loves my visits. She hates her space. She won't go into the rec room to watch TV with "the others" because they are droolies. My mother has her own corner in her room right next to a window. It has a pretty but trite floral curtain that looks pretty with her floral bedspread that I gave her for Christmas. Right outside her window are two very pretty trees filled with natural activity. She can lie there in her hospital bed and look out the window, enjoying a beautiful day with out having to see anyone. What she doesn't have is her own TV at the foot of her bed. So instead she is forced to lie there, looking out the window. This distraction lasts a short while and then the thoughts start creeping in. She says that she lies there in bed all day thinking about all of the mistakes she's made in her life. She thinks about the men she's married, the men she's dated, her drinking when it was really bad, the money she has lost over the years, the beautiful houses she once lived in, the country club she was a member of, the tennis tournaments she played in and won, the gardens she used to tend, the friends she used to have, the clothes, the Junior League. She thinks about how beautiful her life was. Just think of what the Duchess of York is going to think about while she is withering away her twilight years tucked into a corner bed. Hope her TV is really loud! My mom thinks of all of the stupid stuff she did in her life. It depresses her and makes her anxious. She says she needs her own TV just like she had when she was in her own apartment, alone, by herself with her caregivers who were only there a couple of hours in the morning and evening. She could watch what she wanted. Fill her head with mindless TV crap so she didn't have to fill it with real life crap. I think that is what TV has become. It's a way to distract one from aaaalll of the stuff that no one wants to deal with. Couch potatoes grow moldy and mildewy... stinky. She is not a droolie but we had no choice. This place solved an immediate problem but is not ideal. They take very good care of her, she is always clean, hair brushed, they even put make up on her so she doesn't look so gaunt and pale. It's a very sweet place. But she isn't eating again. She's down to 96 pounds. I think she has put on one pound since she's been there. She is wasting away to nothing. This couch potato is succumbing to the elements.