Transitions

Culture shock? Is that what this would be called? Once, during a yearly "education day" that was dreaded by all who were on the "mandatory attendance" list, someone got my attention in a big way. She had an exercise to make us realize how our lives changed as we got older. We started out with a list of things that made up our lives, starting at our young adult stage. I won't be able to remember all of the categories, which is a shame, because it was one of the key points to the exercise. It was basically categories of things that made up our lives, and persona. The first category was "ROLES" This included things such as wife, mother, daughter, sister, in my case. Another was a list of things we were proficient in, such as my health care roles of nursing and being a charge nurse, keeping the household finances, caregiver to children. Another was probably a hobby category, important possessions, and a couple of others. We were given a number for each category that we were to list. We then went through the different stages of our lives and came to realize how our lives changed with each stage. We did exercizes that showed us how our senses would deteriorate as we got older. We wore gardening gloves on the wrong hands, then were given a fine motor skills task to accomplish to show us loss of dexterity and sensation, and were told to imagine that each movement caused us pain. We were given very strong glasses to wear, to show our vision loss. We put on earphones and listened to a list of words, then wrote down what we thought those words were, once while the recording was simulating hearing loss, then simulating having in hearing aids, then the list was done in a normal audio. I don't think anyone got more than 40% of the words right in the first two simulations. When we discussed our lists, we were carried through stages of life , and told to cross off items that might be lost with each stage. They took us all the way to being placed in a nursing home with no control of our bodily functions, no control of our daily schedule, and maybe even no control of our thought processes. It was an extremely sobering exercize. The purpose was to make us much more aware of what our elderly patients were experiencing. Hopefully, it would make us much more patient when dealing with things like how much time it took to get them up to the bathroom, how many times we had to tell them the same thing, either because they couldn't hear us, or their short term memory was shot. How to be patient when asked to do simple tasks like open their milk carton, how to give them some dignity and safe amounts of independence. My take away was not only to have my eyes opened to things I had not given the first thought, but were huge for my elderly patients, but to try and remember that younger people in my life would not have the benefit of this "aha" moment. I would need to be patient with them as well. There were many things this exercize couldn't show, out of safety concerns, or because there was no way to simulate mental/cognitive issues. But it made me think about those things as well. Now, I am older. I am not what you would call "infirm" by any stretch of the imagination, but aging is definitely leaving it's mark on me. I am much more careful when climbing on things, I make sure there is something to pull myself by when I get down on the floor or ground. I try my best to have people talk to me face to face so I can read lips along with the sound. I give myself more time and look, look again, and maybe, look again before I pull into traffic. Go ahead and honk....you will be there one day. Or maybe not, if you continue to be in such a hurry. I am dealing with changing roles. I have become semi-retired. I have given up the position of primary charge nurse, and a large percentage of the time I spend in the care of patients. It is an adjustment, for sure. The exercize helped us to see how much of what we do defines us in our minds. I am also dealing with the time to work on my eternal "to do" list. I have crossed a couple of minor things off my list with a great sense of satisfaction, but some of the list is overwhelming. I don't quite know where to start, and are finding myself re-prioritizing . I am experiencing some anxiety as a result. I am having to actively shut down my internal dialogue to be able to go to sleep. I am having to remind myself that all my babies are just fine without my constantly in their lives, I have done my job. I knew it was going to be different, I just didn't realize just how much different. It is all still very new, I suspect I will get the hang of it, tho. Just be patient with me please.