Radio Australia Today Editorial
Playing Doctors and Nurses. It’s no game.
22 December 2008
I’ve just spent five days in Sydney looking after my mum, who is ailing in hospital after a series of strokes. Her physical health is apparently very good for an 86 year old, but her mind is slipping away.
She needs to be fed, dressed and toileted. In fact all the things that she used to do for we, her children, when we were newborn. There were times when I was spoon-feeding her that she showed some real obstreperousness. She didn’t want to have her potato; she was only interested in dessert. Somewhere deep in the back of my brain I remember making the same kind of fuss once. Or more than once.
The sight of seeing your beloved mum attached to tubes, with her cracked lips and that hospital odour of disinfectant and poo made me respect more than ever the people who work in this environment every day. I came in for a few hours at meal times, did the feeding, stroked and kissed and pretended to understand everything my mum was mumbling, and then went off to the rest of my life. The nurses are the ones who stay to change the sheets, dressings and nappies. Doctors are the ones who mend the ever more present broken hips for people who may never walk again anyway. Yet they do it with the same enthusiasm that they would give to an Olympic marathon runner with the same injury.
Meanwhile I’m back in Melbourne presenting a radio program and talking to the wife about which restaurant we’re going to eat in tonight.
Sure my sister and brother are checking in with mum everyday, and she doesn’t really know them that much anymore. The day after a visit she has certainly forgotten that they were there yesterday.
In many communities the family matriarch is kept at home and cared for, not just just by daughters, but by the whole family. Grandchildren and friends will feed and love, and in the process, the kids learn about life. I do wonder whether our ways are good ways. Sure, putting our olds in hospices and care facilities allows us to get on with our lives. But..
- Phil
Garth from New Caledonia
"...Hmmm. I know what you are saying, but there is another side to this issue. My Christmas trip to Oz is currently consumed by tending to the needs of my 88 year old mum - she expects that everyone will stop their lives and devote them to what she wants to happen. Well, it is just not realistic, attention needs by nature to be focused mainly downwards on children and grandchildren. It is certainly sad when aged parents start to lose the plot, but one needs to be realistic and say "hey, we'll do what we can, but we cannot ignore the raft of other family commitments". My mother has admitted that she didn't pay much attention to her grandmother, but now she expects 100% attention on her from the entire family. No...."
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