Consistency is something you can count on with the OCS adult. In a weird way they're predictable.
When the behavior or the offense is minor, you often feel bored or taken advantage of. For example, everyone knows the story of Cinderella. Well, the stepmother is an OCS adult with nasty intents. She forces Cinderella to work like a slave, won't allow her to go to the ball and tries to prevent the prince from fitting the glass slipper on Cinderella's foot. She's only interested in her own agenda, no doubt about it, but what certifies her as an OCS is her self-aggrandizing perspective.
My sib had similar characteristics. She chose a nursing home with adequate credentials, but after seeing the individual care mom received, she failed to look at it from mom's perspective. Due to her dementia, Mom needed even more of the attention and compassion she received as a normal functioning adult.
If you don't already know this, nursing homes are really energized by the number of nurse assistants present. At least in my mother's dementia unit, the charge nurse sat behind a tall circular station and wrote notes. Constantly. I guess they were necessary but to visitors, the nurse's isolation from her patients insulted the supposed philosophy of a dementia unit.
And when something practical had to be done--such as take a patient to the bathroom or bathe a patient, the nurse assistant was elected to do this. Naturally there was a shortage of assistants, so I suggested to my sib that she hire an assistant for extra hours to give Mom a more stimulating day -take her outside when the weather was mild, talk to her like a friend, maybe even accompany her on a trip outside the nursing home. My sib was not openly hostile to the recommendation, but I could see her brain reluctantly computing the cost. I told her that it was Mom's money, not hers, and she should be using it to enhance her quality of life. Since she was the only one who could write checks on mom's account, she was the supreme decision maker, and I could tell she loved that power trip.
Months pass--I call my mom every day and the hired assistant makes sure she gets to talk to me. Mom's verbal abilities are quickly fading, and time is not on our side. From what I gather from the nurse assistant, my sister visits once a week. Mom says my sister plays the piano for the unit, and this is, I must admit, a group-minded contribution. But Mom would rather have the sib spend time with just her. I can't blame her--she gets few visitors to break up the monotony. I visit about 3 to 4 times a year and spend the time shuttling back and forth from my sister's house in East Brunswick to the nursing home in Somerset. I appreciate that the sib allows me to stay at her house and use her car (which I fuel and once repair), but she hardly ever accompanies me to see Mom. Time hurls us forward, and then, when I think it cannot get much worse, it does.
By now, Mom is in a wheelchair, no longer mobile, ,which the staff are happy about since there's less chance that she can reach up with her arm and set off the fire alarm (this move on my mom's part would be funny if it weren't for the context). I speak to the nurse assistant frequently so I'm not surprised when she tells me the nursing home has new owners. I'm hopeful that things may now improve, but my sib feels just the opposite. In emails back and forth she says she's removing mom from this nursing home and putting her in a "better one" in West Orange. I call her reaction "hysterical" and write a long email beseeching her not to take a 90-year-old terminally-ill woman away from a familiar environment and expose her to a new setting and new staff. This will negatively impact her health, I stress. My sib does not reply. I implore her to respect my wishes.
A few days later I get a call from the nurse assistant we hired and she tells me in between sobs that my sister took my mom and her clothes away and is moving my mom to West Orange. I cannot believe my sib went against my well articulated wishes. When I ask her later on why she did it, she says "because I could."
When the behavior or the offense is minor, you often feel bored or taken advantage of. For example, everyone knows the story of Cinderella. Well, the stepmother is an OCS adult with nasty intents. She forces Cinderella to work like a slave, won't allow her to go to the ball and tries to prevent the prince from fitting the glass slipper on Cinderella's foot. She's only interested in her own agenda, no doubt about it, but what certifies her as an OCS is her self-aggrandizing perspective.
My sib had similar characteristics. She chose a nursing home with adequate credentials, but after seeing the individual care mom received, she failed to look at it from mom's perspective. Due to her dementia, Mom needed even more of the attention and compassion she received as a normal functioning adult.
If you don't already know this, nursing homes are really energized by the number of nurse assistants present. At least in my mother's dementia unit, the charge nurse sat behind a tall circular station and wrote notes. Constantly. I guess they were necessary but to visitors, the nurse's isolation from her patients insulted the supposed philosophy of a dementia unit.
And when something practical had to be done--such as take a patient to the bathroom or bathe a patient, the nurse assistant was elected to do this. Naturally there was a shortage of assistants, so I suggested to my sib that she hire an assistant for extra hours to give Mom a more stimulating day -take her outside when the weather was mild, talk to her like a friend, maybe even accompany her on a trip outside the nursing home. My sib was not openly hostile to the recommendation, but I could see her brain reluctantly computing the cost. I told her that it was Mom's money, not hers, and she should be using it to enhance her quality of life. Since she was the only one who could write checks on mom's account, she was the supreme decision maker, and I could tell she loved that power trip.
Months pass--I call my mom every day and the hired assistant makes sure she gets to talk to me. Mom's verbal abilities are quickly fading, and time is not on our side. From what I gather from the nurse assistant, my sister visits once a week. Mom says my sister plays the piano for the unit, and this is, I must admit, a group-minded contribution. But Mom would rather have the sib spend time with just her. I can't blame her--she gets few visitors to break up the monotony. I visit about 3 to 4 times a year and spend the time shuttling back and forth from my sister's house in East Brunswick to the nursing home in Somerset. I appreciate that the sib allows me to stay at her house and use her car (which I fuel and once repair), but she hardly ever accompanies me to see Mom. Time hurls us forward, and then, when I think it cannot get much worse, it does.
By now, Mom is in a wheelchair, no longer mobile, ,which the staff are happy about since there's less chance that she can reach up with her arm and set off the fire alarm (this move on my mom's part would be funny if it weren't for the context). I speak to the nurse assistant frequently so I'm not surprised when she tells me the nursing home has new owners. I'm hopeful that things may now improve, but my sib feels just the opposite. In emails back and forth she says she's removing mom from this nursing home and putting her in a "better one" in West Orange. I call her reaction "hysterical" and write a long email beseeching her not to take a 90-year-old terminally-ill woman away from a familiar environment and expose her to a new setting and new staff. This will negatively impact her health, I stress. My sib does not reply. I implore her to respect my wishes.
A few days later I get a call from the nurse assistant we hired and she tells me in between sobs that my sister took my mom and her clothes away and is moving my mom to West Orange. I cannot believe my sib went against my well articulated wishes. When I ask her later on why she did it, she says "because I could."
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