Two Sides of Aging

The best time for a kiss shows up before the kiss happens.

Something shivers in the air between his soft old lips and mine.

Thousands of kisses burn and tingle there between our skins

in the almost touching places we still share.

As long as bliss can bloom and breath can bear

As long as there are living rivers in the air.

                                                                          --Shirley Windward (88) to her husband Erv (91)

    As I enter the second year of the OTA program, I feel excited, daunted and excited again. I have always been more comfortable with older people than younger ones. They tend to have a wealth of information if you take the time to listen. In fact, part of what excites me about this semester is the prospect of learning something in my interviews that I can incorporate into my daily routine of patient care.

     The bulk of my experience with an aging population has been with people who are aging in place. Almost everyone I know over the age of 65 lives on their own or with spouses. They are active, generally happy, and have enough money to sustain a comfortable life without giving up any necessities. They are like the people from the documentary Beauty of Aging by Laurie Schur, which has an excerpt below.

     What I find to be daunting about doing fieldwork at a skilled nursing facility is these are the same people I know, only they have had their independence stripped from them because of an inability to care for themselves at home any longer. As I discovered this week, only 4.5% of the elderly population lives in a nursing facility, but 30% of this small number are lonely or depressed because their needs are not being met on a physical, spiritual, social or emotional level. Prior to entering a facility, it is important to find the closest fit possible to address all areas of care. Skillednursingfacilities.org offers a list of all of the services available and links to more than 15,000 facilities nationwide.
     As a future COTA, my job is to do my best to give the people in SNFs the dignity, respect and independence they had when they could completely care for themselves (and help those in rehab get back home). I hope I can be effective in working toward written goals while embracing all aspects of need fulfillment in the small amount of time I will be allotted with each patient.
     The second excitement I feel toward this semester is knowing that I am really beginning to practice the techniques I have learned on fellow students. I am sure it will be quite a challenge to do in a real setting. I am counting on the clients being as patient with me as I will need to be with them.