Although I did not visit an unwell or ill person over the break I can recall me experience this past summer working at a nursing home and with my new insight analyze it differently.During this past summer i worked at a primarily Jewish nursing home in williamsburg. It was a pretty depressing place. A building full of people who were sitting around waiting to die. They had to get passes to leave the building and the majority of them hardly left their floor. The floors had a very strong stench from patients who refused to shower, the rooms had to be cleaned daily, there were constantly spills throughout the building. Half of the patients were in wheelchairs and could hardly get around on their own. Then worst of all were the patients who were to sick to even leave their room. They would lay in their bed and watch T.v and sleep all day, food would be bought to their room, and they hardly got any interaction with other people, besides the housekeeping and the doctors. The quality of life was pretty bad to say the least however that was not the worst part of living in this nursing home.
That attitude of the entire staff as well as almost all of the patients was by far the most depressing thing about the place. The patients were used to being dependant on everybody you could tell there was a sense of shame, a sense that they felt beneath the nursing home staff. The nurses yelled when they got frustrated, the staff seemed disinterested in their problems, and people hardly took the time to interact with these people as if they were people. The staff seemed fed up with the patients, this is not to say that the staff were bad people because the patients were very irratating at times, but it seemed that many people lacked the compassion that these people deserve. It was as if society was throwing these people away and waiting for them to die and overall thats how they were treated.
This situation stems out of social practices more so than mortality and human vulnerability because although these people do need a large amount of help in taking care of themselves, the way we deal with people who are no longer "productive" components of society is very inhumane. It is one thing to help someone and another to look down on them for needing help. We must understand that those lucky enough to it to such an old age will need to be taken care of in some form or another and that this is not something to be looked down upon but simply a part of life. I think there is a big correlation between what a person can contribute to society and how they are treated. A working adult is treated with much more respect and usually seen as an equal by his peers however and old man or a young child is seen as someone who has to be taken care someone less deserving of the respect you give a middle aged adult. Not respect in the sense of being polite but respect in the sense of being treated as if they were a human being and as if their live was of value, because after all these are both true.
For Omar: Your most beautiful line was your last paragraph when you said " not respect in the sense of being polite but respect in the sense of being treated as if they were a human being and as if their life was of value, because after all these are both true." This seems very true they still treat the people with the same politeness however, as a human being and the value of their life is a different story. This is something that most people myself included to other people in life. I think this is beautifully written, as so true. People probably do this sub-consciencely, I sure do think so. Is there a way to fix this now, I don't have the answer.
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