sense

My female owner is currently trying to make sense of her externship experience. As you may already know, she has been feeling shortchanged about her current placement. Having to start up a psychological service in an unfamiliar, never tried before population group (residential aged care) is not what a postgrad psychologist-in-training would expect to undertake during her training. In all other placements, the psychological service is, expectedly, up and running. All the trainee needs to do is to go in, see clients, meet with her supervisor, clock the hours and get out. Here, my female owner is really left alone, with a supervisor who has minimal experience in the current setting. Talk about being left alone. She spends a good part of her time just chit-chatting with the older adults. Once in a while, she throws in a therapeutic question but the older adults tend to go all over the place and my female owner has no choice but to flow with them.

Admittedly, she is struggling to understand how God can make something good out of this situation. She finds no pleasure in this externship, whatever good feelings she has centre around being relieved that “at least I did some form of clinical work today”. She gets gloomy on Tuesday nights because she goes for work on Wednesdays and Thursdays and becomes really liberated on Thursday evenings. Truth be told, she can’t wait for this to be over. 10 more weeks she says.

Alas, the reflective side of her screams out “enjoy the process!” There is something surreal about working with people who are in their 80+ and 90+. Looking at their life experiences, aging process and human spirit, it is not hard to wonder how your own life would turn out in decades to come. Old people are not a homogenous lot. They are individuals, with different needs, personalities and abilities. Like many younger people, some are happy and contented, some are disatisfied about life. The demented (a common phenomena among the aged), though having some memory loss and disorientation to their current reality, is still capable of feeling depressed, unwanted and insecure. They simply live in an altered state of reality.

Some comments that she has heard so far:

“Thank you for taking an interest.” – 88 year-old man with mild dementia.

“Why is dying so hard?” – 96 year-old frail woman who used to be able to walk on her hands, now afflicted with multiple illnesses. Is living till such an old age a curse? Or a blessing?

“I try to be happy” – 87 year-old verbally aggressive woman who, in a tender moment, shows her vulnerable side. The desperation of a highly depressed woman.

“Can she play cards?” – 67 year-old man who was looking for a third person to join the cards table. My female owner ended up playing jim rummy with them. (At the same time, a vision of her playing bridge and taidi with her aged friends in an old folks’ home flashed by her).