9.
“I was in the hospital for a few days with what turned out to be nothing, but one night around 3 a.m., they brought a new patient into my room. As they were getting him into the bed, he started having a full-voice conversation about how he felt fine and being in the hospital was silly. In a very polite, calm, but firm voice. He started saying that he didn’t need to be there and was going home, getting progressively louder and angrier. I could tell from the voice he was an older gentleman, and it turned out he had dementia.”
“The weird part was sitting there in the dark as a larger and larger group of doctors, nurses, and orderlies came to try and get him to calm down. When that didn’t work, another woman who was clearly fairly high up the authority ladder started talking in a slow, loud, and clear voice, telling the crowd (not the patient anymore) that they were going to restrain and sedate hIm.
She narrated every step, while he shouted and threatened. Clearly, she was addressing future lawyers and investigators. The whole procedure took more than half an hour, while orderlies held him (which was different from restraining him). It ended with something like ‘we are injecting him to sedate him,’ followed by a very quick fade-out before they took him out of the room.
It was both sad and scary to see (or, rather, hear) someone who had clearly been a fairly intelligent, self-assured, and independent person going down that road. Not understanding what was happening, and getting insulted and then outraged by what he perceived as his mistreatment and loss of autonomy. It gave me a sense of what hell it must be caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease.”
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