Liz LaRue’s On-going Saga & Rehab/Nursing Home Journey
- Christine "Liz" LaRue
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
It’s 5 a.m.! I was awakened by a male CNA standing over my bed in a loud voice saying, “Do you need to be changed?” Suddenly alert, I said, “NO!” I had been in deep slumber. A heartbeat later, I heard my blind roommate suddenly scrambling in bed. The male CNA, seeing her deep asleep, had started to move her bedclothes, and she began fighting and resisting him vigorously. Amazed at her actions, the male CNA towered over my bed asking, “What’s her problem?”
I said, “She’s blind. She doesn’t like being changed by male CNAs.” He immediately left the room. The response in the room atmosphere was electric. I turned on my TV and immediately turned to the Zen channel, which gives beautifully photographed videos of landscape scenes, artists painting and doing ceramics, birds, flowers opening, along with serene music. The first scene was a beach at night with just waves sloshing along a beach.
My roommate asked, “What’s that?” I told her what I saw and that she was hearing waves. My roommate currently is huddled in her corner, her face plastered against the wall. She had wrapped herself in her sheet, holding her pillow. As this Zen channel continued, the sheet came down slowly, and now she is just leaning on her pillow. She is humming to the music. Her voice is soft and musical.
Though calming, I am completely awake… not sure if I can get back to sleep now.
Note: 1 in 5 women in the U.S. have been sexually abused or assaulted by a male relative, domestic partner, someone in her environment, or randomly.
I, myself, am a sexual assault survivor. I was 8 years old. I remember the terror like it was yesterday. The boy was 12 and the son of my afterschool daycare provider. I fought him off, terrified, and ran home, refusing to go back.
I did not tell my mother until I was 22 when, years later, the daycare woman and her son came by for a surprise visit. I refused to let them in my parents’ house even though both my parents were home with me. My mother demanded to know why I was behaving so ungraciously. That is when I told her what happened. She broke down in tears and wept, holding me… mother and daughter who were both social workers.
You see, when my parents moved and bought their first home, it was just a few houses away from that daycare provider’s home, but they had moved away. At the age of 8, I had no language to describe what happened to me. I felt I had done something terribly wrong, and the boy had threatened me. At 22, with more social work training and that memory unlocked, I finally told my parents. Amazingly enough, my mother had had a similar experience but with her own grandfather! He died when she was 10, and she had to handle the funeral arrangements because her grandmother was completely illiterate.
As I watch this Zen TV program, it is 5:50 a.m. My roommate has settled back in bed and is asleep. Before she fell asleep, she asked me what I was watching. I told her. Now that she is relaxing, maybe I can relax myself.
Experiences like this, unfortunately, are common in rehab/nursing homes. Corporations prize the dollar and tasks more than the patients. Trump removed the standards of patient-to-nurses and CNAs ratios. Now these places hire less skilled personnel and give medical staff higher patient loads. It ends up with staff who are more task-centered than patient-centered. You might have one nurse handing out medications to over 75 or more patients on one shift. I just heard about a well-heeled nursing home, very expensive, but they hire no CNAs, but people who are ‘caregivers’. They perform the same work as CNAs but are unlicensed and untrained. The place doesn’t pay them much, and sometimes there are nurses and sometimes not. These places fly easily under states’ radars because city officials allow them to do so.
But this isn’t new. I saw this in 1985 with my grandparents’ care… in 2003 with my mother’s care, in 2019 with my father’s short stint, and my parents had the Cadillac insurance coverage.
I have seen the same problems in the past that I am dealing with myself.
My roommate is fast asleep now.
I am watching a sun-dappled forest scene right now as the camera drifts slowly through the trees…
Artist Bio
Christine “Liz” LaRue is a clay artist and illustrationist. She is known for her intricately textured figurative sculptures and emotionally illustrative drawings. Chicago-born though also raised in Utah and Idaho, Ms. LaRue is of Creole/Cuban descent. Her art has been influenced by her Afro-Latino heritage. Ms. LaRue’s interests have been in pre-Columbian art of the Olmec, Maya of Mexico, Nazca, and Moche face pots of Peru. This also includes the bronze sculptures of the Ife of Nigeria and Tā Moko tattoo art of the Maōri.
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