Scapegoat

It's a fine balance between the facilitation of caring for someone's safety and well-being and treating someone like a child. This isn't the first time this conflict has been mentioned here and I am sure it won't be the last. The truth of the matter is that Alma needs assistance and reminders regarding her daily care and hygiene and she does not believe this to be the case. Therefore, she is left feeling like she is being treated like a baby. The conflict here only increases as she moves in and out of wanting to be taken care of.  More on that another day.

I bring this up because I waited until last night to address the whole dental hygiene thing (if you missed yesterday’s post, Emeritus failed to make sure Alma cleaned her teeth the entire week she was away). Truth be told, I wanted to have her clean her teeth as soon as we got home and realized that this would only upset her. After dinner, Alma was trying to slip quietly off to bed and I intercepted her so that we could deal with brushing her teeth and denture cleaning. She immediately resisted and later Keith told me this may be why the staff at Emeritus didn't do it (I don't care - this is their job). She ended up getting very angry with me and began a mini tantrum (those are really starting to freak me out). In the end, I had to tell her she had stuff in her teeth and she looked in the mirror, seemed surprised but agreed and apologized to me for getting upset. I felt like I was humiliating her arguing with her over this seemingly silly issue and I hated every minute of it.

This theme translates into many areas of her care and it feels like one big fat double bind. On one hand, she doesn’t know to do these things and hasn’t for quite some time. I won’t allow her to be one of those elderly people (like the ones from the Adult Care Center) who are unkempt and smell bad due to caregiver neglect. I feel like I would be failing her if I did. Before she was afflicted with this horrible disease, Alma was always well put together, meticulous and very clean. On the other hand, I don’t want to make her feel bad about herself or make her think that we all feel she is incompetent. Therefore, I have resigned myself to being the scapegoat in this family.

According to Dictionary.com, a scapegoat is someone who bears the blame or suffers in another’s place (I believe it is originally a Biblical Reference). Okay, so calling myself a scapegoat may be a tad melodramatic. Not to mention the fact that, I am really not suffering for anyone in that it is me that is causing most of the strife in Alma’s life. However, I use this term as a reminder (for me) that Alma may have a great need to blame someone and let out her frustrations. This woman has been dumped on her whole life and who am I to tell her there is spinach from last week stuck in her teeth? Perhaps taking on the role of scapegoat is a necessary process to keep me humble in this role (believe me-my ego often needs to be regularly taken down a peg or two). It just kind of sucks that it’s getting to the point that every time I walk into a room, she cringes.