the caregiver

Leny writes about her neighbor and her caregiver and once in a while I peak into how Basagulo is doing at his latest nursing job.

Like many Filipino families, a number of my relatives are caregivers, nurses, nannies. They work in retirement homes, hospitals. Many immigrants without papers are hired through caregiver referral agencies. In the Philippines and I suspect in Fiji as well, they are being paid here to fulfill roles that in their home countries would have been done by their children. But here in America there are numerous reasons why we must hire people to fill these roles: not close to the family, no family, financial constraints, a need to maintain independence. The growing elderly population and longer life spans will require more caregivers.

Having several caregivers in the family, when my grandparents went to hospitals either for routine things or for more dire reasons, we tried to not take it out on the nurses, which so commonly happens. Often nurses are right in the stress fracture, pressured to follow administrative demands and doctors orders who only glance at patients a few minutes each day, patients who don't follow the directives given to them, and their families filled with anxiety over their family's hospital stay.

I remember once, my grandmother was in a room with an elderly Caucasian woman. As far as we knew she didn't have any visitors. She buzzed for the nurses every few minutes for one thing or another. I remember the nurse coming up to her bed, getting her the glass of water she wanted and saying to the woman, "You're an ornery woman. That's why people don't like you. People don't visit." It was rather cruel, but something in me told me that it wasn't a lie either. And people will argue what of the nurse's bedside manner because we have this Florence Nightingale image that nurses will be kind and caring, but hey a person can only take so much.

And I wondered about the circumstances that brought this lonely woman who shared my grandmother's hospital room here. People, like the neighbor, who in the end are getting help and care from others despite all their efforts to push people away.

And what of the caregivers? Some like my family members stay with it, despite the hard work because it still provides dollars. The balance between the pain you can endure and the dollar you get for it. A reliable career that is so in demand you don't worry about not getting another job because someone will take you in somewhere. Others leave the profession, pick up a degree in something else. And the ones that stay in it, have their network of people to help them talk through their ordeals. They find ways to heal themselves though even then it's difficult. The nail parlor near Kaiser is full of nurses getting their hands and feet manicured and massaged.

At my ten year high school reunion, there was a group of women who all became nurses just like their mothers. I told one who worked at Children's Hospital that I write poetry. She replied, "There needs to be more poetry in the world." I couldn't imagine the kind of patients she sees in a day, but it was easy enough to know why she would say that.