East side walk it out...

While I can't say I'm surprised, I am a bit dismayed. The one job I did have, providing overnight care for Melvin, a very elderly man, has been prematurely terminated. Melvin fell and broke his hip, landing him in the hospital for some time.

When I began to tell other people this, the general response I got was along the lines of, "well, that sucks. Where are you going to get money now?" After getting this response several times, I got so upset that I stopped telling people. Seriously, the issue at hand is Melvin, not my paycheck. This poor old man has seriously injured himself, and is in the hospital now. At 88 years old, I sort of expect that this may be the beginning of the end for him. I called to check on him this past weekend and the girl I talked to says he is not healing well because he is terrified that his family has left him in a nursing home. If he isn't able to start calming down, I'm afraid he really will just give up and die.

I have learned so much about care for the elderly from working with Melvin and his family. This man is almost 90 years old, but he still enjoyed tooling around his house, loving his cat, feeding the birds, and watching The 700 Club. In his prime, he was one of the head professors of the University of Arizona Ag Department. Several of those of us who work with him know that he's still pretty with it. However, his daughter and some of the other caretakers seem to have given him up to dementia, so they treat him like a child, which he obviously resents. I don't doubt that he's anxious about what his family is going to do with him at this point, since they've been less than totally supportive the past few years.

I like to think that I'm pretty active in promoting social justice for people who are unfairly treated. I'm especially good at protesting injustice thousands of miles away. Working with Melvin, however, has enabled me to see that there are likely hundreds of elderly people in Tucson who are neglected, misunderstood, and mistreated, because, hey, they're going to die soon anyway. While North American society may not have the horrible civil wars, class conflicts, and famines that many in the rest of the world do, we certainly do not have time or space to deal with the elderly, or the homeless, or the disabled, or anyone else who is similarly unable to contribute. It's amazing that in other parts of the world, a family may not have food to eat or a roof over their heads, but they have the time and energy to care for Grandpa, or a crippled cousin.

Humbling, really.

In other news, my mother is speculating that I might have West Nile Virus. That's kind of exciting! If it turns out to be something else I will probably be a little disappointed.