When I hear about what life is like in nursing homes, I dread it. Even if the care is exemplary, it would be hell for me because I am an introvert. Rather than having their own shower, nursing home patients are bathed (because they can't do it themselves). Health care workers come check up on them in the middle of the night. Their lives are necessarily regimented because the institution is, well, institutional - they have to wake up and go to bed and eat and be bathed at a specific time rather than whenever they want.
For me, that's no way to live. I get great joy - yes, joy is le mot juste - from sleeping in as long as my body needs to, having a ridiculously long shower and doing some of my best thinking in the pseudo sensory-deprivation that ensues, then eating whatever I want whenever I want at my own pace. I call this process rebooting my brain, and it's an essential part of staying sane and personable enough that people don't defenestrate me. Another thing that's important is being able to completely let my guard down. I cannot completely let my guard down when another person (apart from mi cielito) is in the room, or may enter the room. I could never let my guard down at my parents' unless I was home alone, and my personality suffered for it. If I lived in a nursing home where there were no locks on the doors (which is normal, according to a PSW friend of mine) I could never let my guard down, at all, ever, for the rest of my life. That's not a life worth living, that's just being kept alive.
Someone should do a study on how nursing home conditions affect introvert patients, whether they're significantly worse off than extrovert patients, and maybe come up with new care models to help people preserve their psychological privacy. I tried googling, but the results were tainted by non-scientific definitions of "introvert" - people who think the word means shy or quiet or nervous or doesn't want to go to the potluck, rather than the technical definition of being energized by being alone.
1 comment:
My partner says the same thing. He has a real dread of institutionalization because of this very thing.
I do not describe myself as an introvert but I cherish my alone-time. It would be a horrible thing to lose it.
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