Oct. 13, 2009
She’s old and not worth the work…..
At least that is what it seems like all the professionals are saying. There is an old woman in my neighborhood and she has schizophrenia.
Currently, I believe she is off of her medication. My husband and son were washing the cars a few weeks ago and she came up to them and started talking. During the conversation she told them she was a doctor and built all the hospitals in the area. She also told them she was a police officer and had once traveled into space. She seemed somewhat harmless, except possibly to herself since she was not of sound mind. When my husband told me of the conversation, our son informed us that she walks the neighborhood all the time and picks up things out of people’s yard. Things like kid’s skateboards, their bikes, etc. My son said he and his friend were out playing and she walked by and picked up his friends skateboard and went walking down the road with it. They had to get his friends dad to retrieve the skateboard as she would not give it back to the kids claiming it was hers. I told my son to make sure he never left anything in the front yard then. I asked my husband if she had told him anything about who she lived with. He said she said something about her husband having died, but was confused about when because she keep changing between months and years as she talked. I was very concerned for several reasons. I figured she had to have someone living with her and wondered, did they know she was out walking alone? I started asking my neighbors about her. The stories they told me, not only scared me a bit, but made me angry. Apparently, the police and Human services are well a where of her state of mind and knew she lived alone. Did I mention this woman is about 70 years old? She has a history of violence. Apparently several years ago her husband was in a nursing home. She went to the nursing home, shut the door to her husbands room, put a chair or something to block the door and commenced to beating her bed ridden husband and his roommate. The police and fire department had to be called to break the door down and stop her. She was admitted to a hospital for six months.
Now I am really getting a bit more concerned and bit scared.
Last week I came home from school. It was one of my long days and I get home about an hour after my youngest son. He’s twelve. I walk in the door and he meets me in the foyer. He tells me the old woman was in our backyard. He said she was sitting on our patio furniture smoking a cigarette. When she finished her cigarette, she walked over to our tomatoes and was looking at them, squeezing them to see if the were ripe and then walked around our yard and eventually left. He said he was scared because the screen door on the porch was unlocked and the sliding door was unlocked as well.
Okay, now I was freaked out. I did not tell my son, but my husband got up early one weekend around 5:30 am and seen the screen door was standing wide open. I had to be at work that morning by 4:00 am, so I was already gone. It had happened one other time after that. We are extremely terrible about leaving our porch and our sliding doors unlocked. So, here I am putting stories together and now fear this poor old woman has been at least on my porch if not inside my house walking around. I call the police (by the way they knew who she was as soon as I gave my address). While I am waiting for them to show up I go to her neighbors and talk to them and they tell me she has no running water and hasn’t for weeks. They had called human services and they have done nothing. I am immediately angry. I go home and wait some more for the police. Four hours later I make another call to the police and they inform me my call came in during shift change and got lost in the shuffle. I’m so freaking glad I wasn’t being stabbed to death by an intruder. They send an officer out another hour later. They female officer comes to my house. I tell her what I know of the woman, that she does not have running water and I feel she has slipped through the cracks of our society and could one day be found dead in her home and been dead for days or weeks before anyone would know. The officer assures me that something will be done especially since she is so old and has no running water. The officer goes to her house and calls me from there. She tells me the old woman is extremely friendly, but denied at first that she was in our back yard, but she admitted that we had a beautiful pool and tomatoes (both are in the backyard). The officer stated that she was of sound mind and was aware she had no running water. I asked the officer if the woman had told her she was a doctor and had built all the hospitals in the area and was a police officer herself? The officer stated, well she has said some pretty outlandish things, but she’s still of sound mind. She also tells me she is going to call human services. I am pissed. How can a person not be insane, but say insane things? The woman is still living in her home with no water. She carries a jug to the lake in our neighborhood and fills it. She walks around her backyard with no clothes on and has no fence. She enters her neighbor’s house without invitations if they forget to lock their doors. She came back to my house just the other day and walked right into my garage through the side door. I wasn’t home, my husband was. He asked her not to enter our home without being asked, she told him she was a police officer and was allowed to enter any home. He did not call the police, he feels it’s a waste of our time, that they will not do anything.
My fear is this woman will die in her home and no one will know for days or worse yet she will enter a home at night and will get shot, or enter a home and possibly hurt someone in their sleep. How in the world can a person have so little value that no one cares? It’s too much paper work. The state will not step in. I want to call the news paper and have a story done on this poor old woman and how she is lost. I can’t help but wonder if the reason she is not on her medication is because she could not afford it. Knew she was going to slip into a world of confusion and just hoped that someone would pull her back from the obis. No one has and from what I understand it has been years. I am angry.
I talked to my Anatomy professor, he use to be the head of the CDC in Atlanta, so I know he is pretty well connected. He shook his head, then asked me, “What are you planning on doing? Are you wanting to help this woman out? Are you wanting to get involved?” I looked at him and said, “I want to help her out of her situation, but I can not go and check on her daily, I don’t have the time or energy to take on a project like that.” He smiled and said, “No and you shouldn’t. Your not a social worker and you are not trained, but now you know what part of the problem is. No one has time, money or the energy to help this woman, and that includes the state. They are over whelmed with cases like these.” Me, “But that makes me angry, this poor old woman is lost in her confusion and could hurt herself or someone else. She has value and everyone acts like she’s too much work.’ He told me of some agencies to call and see if I could get any of them to help, but warned me of the walls I would run into. He warned me not to let this consume me. I would have to learn this as a nurse when to let go, know what my limitations were, or I would burn out way before my time. He said it was the hardest thing to learn to do and it is something that can not be taught in a class room. I know he is right, but there is a part of me that says, maybe that is what is wrong with this world today…too many people let go all too soon and walk away. I can’t do that. It is not in me to walk away and let some helpless person drowned. I would want someone to save me. . .
Vital