02 - 2003

Growing older in Germany

Sometimes she talks with the photos of her loved ones

by Ulrike Schnellbach

This report portrays daily life in care through the eyes of an 87-year-old, mentally active resident of a nursing home.

"Yes, I know, lack of time,” says Annegret Riedel (not her real name), "who has time? Not even me, because I can hardly move and everything takes so long.” And as for the nurses, they have "precious little time”. But "it’s not their fault”, they would be glad to take more time. Ms. Riedel wishes that someone would sit by her bed in the evening sometimes and tell her about what’s going on in the house and outside. "Otherwise you miss what happens every day, you don’t hear enough about it.”

Annegret Riedel is, one might say, an average resident of the Saint Charles Nursing Home in Freiburg; she is 87, exactly the average age in the house, and receives Level 2 care. She had a stroke six years ago and since then has been paralysed on the right side. She has no children, so on many days she sees no one but the staff and one or another resident of a neighbouring room. But she doesn’t complain, to the contrary, she tries to make as little work for the nurses as possible. She rings only in extreme emergencies, because she knows they have a lot to do and that she won’t be forgotten. Now and then someone may have time to push her wheelchair out to the garden. And the other day, a trainee even took her to the city park, Annegret Riedel says, beaming. But that’s really an exception — the nursing staff definitely don’t have time for that.

At 7:45 the male nurse got her out of bed this morning, sat her on the toilet, gave her a shower and washed her hair — shower day is once a week. He dressed her in a fresh brown blouse, nicely ironed brown slacks, open shoes with high heels, exceptionally. She looks well-groomed. Now he is blow-drying her hair, spraying it briefly, cracking a little joke while bells ring constantly in the hall. The nurse goes away, comes back to wipe the floor dry in the bathroom, chat a moment and bring coffee for the visitor.
At 8:40 he leaves. Ms. Riedel says he is very nice and makes a great effort, but that he doesn’t always take so much time to talk as today when a journalist is here. There are still three and a half hours until dinner time. In these three and a half hours, Ms. Riedel will see the nurse once more, to take her to the toilet. The trainee will clear the dishes away and make the bed, a neighbour will drop by briefly, and the physiotherapist will come for 20 minutes.

Annegret Riedel eats her breakfast, a slice of bread with marmalade cut in small pieces, and shows how she can open the yogurt cup with her one good hand. She looks after herself whenever she can. But would I please close the window? Yes — but what if no visitor were there? "I could stand it,” says Annegret Riedel, "that’s not worth ringing for help”. She rolls her wheelchair to the radiator to see if it is warm, and gets her wheel tangled in the telephone cord. "That’s what you get for being curious”, she grimaces. She cannot get free without help, and from here she cannot reach the bell. "I could always call,” she says, "there’s always someone around who would hear.” But fortunately that hasn’t happened to her so far.
Of course she is lonely sometimes, says the old lady, "but only when it’s a really gloomy day. That happens in normal life too, when you don’t really feel like doing anything.” In "normal life” Annegret Riedel was a pharmacist, worked very hard and also took care of her parents, who lived with her to the end of their lives. She never had much leisure, but she made good money. Together with care insurance, her pension covers the 2580 Euro for her place in the nursing home.

She passes the time with reading and "going out for a look” as she calls it, when she watches the streetcar and makes up stories about it. Now and then she attends a lecture or does finger exercises she has been given. Sometimes she has a conversation with the photos of her loved ones on the wall. After her stroke six years ago she was unable to speak at first, but she taught herself again labouriously, including talking to herself. "I wanted to”, Annegret Riedel emphasises, "WANTED with capital letters.” She has made good progress, and of the 27 residents of Section 4, she is one of the fittest despite her paralysis.

This old lady is demanding, however. If she were offered unironed bed linens, she would refuse to sleep in them. She doesn’t like paper napkins and insists on her cloth napkin. "I hope I’m not too hard on the staff,” she says with a roguish look, but no one has yet told her she was the only one who demanded ironed sheets. "Otherwise I might have tried to improve.” Seriously, she says, the staff are "very obliging.” Sometimes one can make a special request, such as a special meal for one’s birthday. Ms. Riedel tries, for her part, to give the nurses little surprises such as a chocolate bar or an orange. From six years’ experience, she has learned that "It depends on how you treat them yourself, whether they work willingly or whether you have to ask three times for every little thing.” She thinks it over briefly. "We are lucky with the nursing staff we have now,” she says and indicates only vaguely that "It hasn’t always been that way.”

Annegret Riedel can depend on the daily routine. Soon after 12 noon a nurse brings her dinner. Then she is put to bed, and an hour and a half later someone comes with her coffee tray and gets her up. In the course of the afternoon someone will look in to see if she needs anything. Towards six p.m. the evening meal is served, and sometime after seven-thirty, she will be helped to wash herself. The night shift comes on at eight-thirty. Then there are only two night staff on watch in the house, for 120 residents. It was a big adjustment for her at first to go to bed at eight, says Annegret Riedel. "But they can’t all stay here until ten o’clock. You just have to adapt.”

From Publik-Forum, Zeitung kritischer Christen (Newspaper for critical Christians), No. 4/2003.