Philip Y. Kao PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

up and toileting. When I returned, however, Anita was very sedated. The resident
physician at Tacoma Pastures, who was also Anita’s personal doctor, decided to
increase her medication. Jane, another caregiver who really liked Anita, told me that this
was Tacoma Pastures’s way of dealing with problems. As a result, no male caregiver was
assigned to her section again, and when I did work in Little Red, my section comprised
of the other side of the corridor.
Anita’s condition soon worsened. She became very weak, and appeared dry in the
mouth and dehydrated all the time. Whenever she was in the dining room, she did not
eat, and even when the caregivers would feed her soup, the soup would just spill out of
her mouth and onto her bib. Eventually, Anita became bedridden. I never saw her
daughter once, although I knew from the med tech and other caregivers that she had
come to Tacoma Pastures to visit with the head nurse on the fourth floor and with the
resident centre director. Jane told me after Anita passed away that, “The meds really did
her in. It’s a shame. But what can you do?” Jane fed Anita water through a syringe that
Jane had purchased herself from a local pharmacy store. Anita grew more faint and died
in bed one late morning.
Eve and Kent
Eve was born in Germany, and came to the United States to practice medicine. Before
she moved to Tacoma Pastures, she was famous for being one of the first woman
optometrists in the area. In addition to her medical career, Eve was also an amateur
violin player. She never married, but kept a close circle of friends who often provided
her with much support. She was getting too old to drive and felt that she needed to give
up her participation in the community orchestra. Her friends, however, insisted that she
should continue. During her last year in the community orchestra, her friends often
drove her to rehearsals, especially on those wintry nights where the country roads iced
over. As a caregiver in her section, I came to Eve’s room at around 6:45 a.m. After I had
passed out cups of water to everyone in the section, I entered her room and turned on
the bathroom light. I turned on the sink, and took down a small washcloth to get it
warm and wet. After wringing the washcloth, I operated Eve’s mechanical bed and
raised the upper part. She had lost much of her ability to speak due to a stroke, but she
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