Nick

Nick is a tall man with thick glasses and squinting eyes. He travels in his wheelchair continuously, from one end of the unit to the other, into the dining room, around the corner, back to the end, up to the door, into the dining room, up to the other end, all day. Sometimes, Nick stops and says in a small calm voice, "Help. Help."

My friend Martha lost her husband last year, and at the end, she placed him for a while in a small home, with just a few residents. She complained that there was no social interaction, and the caregivers just placed the residents in front of the TV all day.

Activities are a tough concept for a dementia unit. The problem is that activities are exactly what many residents can't do any more. I volunteered one day with the exercise period. First, a caregiver tossed a ball to each resident in turn, and they caught it and tossed it back. That is, those who were able to do that did it, and the two-thirds who couldn't just watched. Linda was in the middle, she was able to bat at the ball, and she sometimes hit it. Either way, she had her usual great time. Then they switched to bowling. I set up the pins, and a few of the residents knocked them down. Noni was the best bowler, which was not surprising. Meanwhile, Nick roamed the halls, opening doors as he wandered. When activity time is over, the TV usually comes on. I know that people who run programs often downplay the television. "We almost never turn on the TV." "We keep the residents so busy that they don't need the TV." But it is very hard to keep a dementia patient busy all the time, and I doubt that the background noise and light of the TV makes much difference to them. It actually might be a comfort, since many of them probably had a TV on most of the time in their own houses. Most of us do! And if we didn't have TVs in the assisted living, what would we do with the old Lawrence Welk tapes?!