Well, compared with yesterday, today was boring. We started with some student lead discussion questions and then our favorite professor, Gerdt Sundström, talked about loneliness in old age. He again showed us numerous great pictures, including one of what often assume elder care to look like… an adult sitting in a big, empty room all alone. Fortunately, that view is changing. When Gerdt finished, a woman came in to talk about a painter who basically painted herself as she aged. She talked about the interpretations of the pictures, such as when the woman got older, she would leave out features in her face to indicate her experiences in getting older. When she was done, we moved onto family and respite care which I don’t think I paid much attention to. To sum up what I did hear (and didn’t doze of for), respite care is offered for family members here which basically means that a trained professional comes in briefly to care for an adult in order to give family members a break. Even though the sessions were slow and somewhat boring, I did figure out part of my syllabus for the Parent Education class that I am teaching in the fall (I needed to stay awake somehow…). I even got feedback on some of my assignments from a student who had taken my class last semester and from two students who are going to be in my class in the fall.
After just a 45 minute lunch (they cut it short which was terrible because we had to rush and Brandy and I had to pick up dinner too for our night patrol), we went back to the university to walk to the bus to go to the Ryhov Hospital.
The bus was packed but long and we noticed something interesting. Normally, when seats fold up and there are buckles, they are wheelchair specific seats in the U.S. Having those here though doesn’t make sense. If you are in a wheelchair, as part of the services of the municipalities, you can either arrange transportation through them or pay a very cheap fare for a taxi (you always have someone to help you or some way to be helped). Therefore, most handicap people do not ride the bus. After talking about it for a few minutes, I saw the little picture that was partially scratched off on the side and realized that it was for strollers. And sure enough, not more than a minute later, a woman with a stroller got on and we all moved so she could have some space. On the way to the hospital, we passed the A6 shopping center/mall and most of the group went there today after the visit (Brandy and I might go tomorrow since we immediately left to go to evening patrol). We also passed IKEA, which was just hilarious.
Tina Salva (one of our Tech professors) joked that this was like someone coming to America and being excited to see and take pictures of Walmart! The lecture at the hospital was ok (the little cakes we had were amazing) and then we toured the geriatric clinic, which consisted of the orthopedic ward, the stroke wards and the dementia ward.
After the hospital tour was complete, Brandy, Frank (a Penn State student) and I were off for evening patrol. Frank left early and one of the university staff members picked up Brandy and me to take us to our sites. While we were hoping we would be together, we weren’t. Brandy was dropped off first somewhere in Jonkoping and then I was dropped off in Huskvarna (a neighboring city).
We drove by some cool places on the way there (i.e., Sweden’s gold medal hokey team arena, mini-golf, an indoor pool, and the Rosarium [a big rose garden]). I’ll give you a basic summary of evening patrol before I talk about what I did. As part of the services provided to older residents here, there are day, evening, and night patrols available. If the adults decide to pay a fee (the amount depends on your income), an alarm is installed in their home and they carry a little button with them. Whenever they need assistance for issues ranging from needing a glass of water to having a stroke, they ring the button and are routed to their area’s patrol service. When the patrol center gets the call, they have 30 minutes to go and provide assistance. Sometimes, the patrol units set up scheduled visits, like to help put an adult to bed. Evening patrol is from 3:00-10:00 and I was there today from around 4:00 to 8:15. We did not receive a single call (we got one from the building but it was basically nothing)! I was already kind of dreading this experience because I have a hard enough time communicating with the adults at home, so I thought talking to the adults here where accents are strong would be even harder. I was kind of glad that no one called though. I had the chance to talk to the two women on patrol that were fabulous, fun, and gave me a lot of insight and information into what they do. They even drove me around the town, took me to an incredible overlook and took me on a scenic country drive.
We could do this and still be on-call because one person is required to keep the cell phone with him/her at all times when on-call. Around 8:00, we figured it would be a good idea to just take me back to the hotel and on the way back, we drove by the group of professors and I walked the rest of the way back with them. I told them what happened tonight and Steve told me I could reschedule for another night… I was not happy with this idea because it takes up a lot of time and even though I think it’s a great program, I just don’t want to do it again. So, we’ll see what happens with that. To round up the rest of the night, I hung out on the roof for a bit to talk with the girls, went down to the lobby to snack on yogurt smoothies and do work and then came back upstairs to work on my journal reflection on today’s hospital visit. Tomorrow is another full day and on Friday, we head of to Goteburg for the weekend. Our group is going early to do some visits there, while I am staying with the Penn State group during the morning so that I can visit the preschool they are going to. I’ll catch the bus around 1:00 and meet up with my group like 2 hours later in Goteburg. More on that later though since I still need to finish my journal and then go to bed!
On a quick side note related to an earlier comment, older adults still have to pay a fee for the alarm service and I’ve found that they have to pay fees for many other services as well (i.e., therapy, hospital charges). Ultimately, is it better to pay health insurance in the states and rarely use it (and not have to always pay fees like this) or to pay 30% of your income to taxes and then continue to pay fees on top of that for healthcare? The benefit here is that the taxes go to other services and really do help out in old age, yet I still can’t help but wonder what the numbers would look like.
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