Crossing Paths
A new arrival’s here. “Just let me be!”
she shouts. The porters wheel her into place:
the bed that stands diagonal from me.
She stares across and says, “I know that face…”
The night staff are observing elsewhere now;
I watch the lady clamber out of bed.
There’s swearing; she’s determined, with a scowl
I recognise. She tuts and shakes her head.
“It’s you there, you, the one who steals the milk!
I saw you last night too, out on the street
before they brought me in. You’re always around,
just loitering. You made them bring me in!”
I smile. We meet again, not from last night,
but almost every time I’m on the wards.
The details differ: fracture, left or right;
infection, often. Always, words like swords,
necessitating shields. The smile, to start,
while wandering the ways inside her mind.
I don’t have access to her formal chart,
just willingness to track the trails I find.
I say the doctor told me, don’t drink milk,
it makes me ill. “Well, doctors! Silly sorts.”
And we connect, there’s conversation, till
the meds nurse comes to settle all her thoughts.
We talk another time before she leaves,
about her street. Although so much is lost –
its name, the neighbours’ names – as illness thieves,
she holds my hand and smiles. Our paths have crossed.
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Published in Snakeskin, August/September 2024
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Every hospital stay I’ve experienced has involved time spent with persons with some form of dementia. At first I found this very unnerving, but I’ve benefited from talking with ward nurses and health care assistants about it, and just trying to work out the best way to be on the wards.
There’s a saying I’ve come across quite a lot over the years: “Connect, don’t correct.” It can be very disorientating and upsetting for persons with dementia when they receive any sort of ‘pushback’ against what they think is true. They can react quite badly to this at times. I’ve found it makes sense to go along with things, stay open, be gentle. Even the angriest person I’ve ever encountered on the wards was settled when I was able to engage with her in this way. Of course it helps that I have Ted Teague with me; the photo above shows us in Acute Care, a day after I came into hospital with my left femur fracture. Subsequently we moved up to 9B for the rest of our stay. Ted is wearing my mask, just for the photo. Unfortunately I did contract Covid-19 a few weeks later, but I made a reasonable recovery.
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Next: With Me