hankyoreh

Apr. 4. His hands were tied because he is known to sometimes smear his own excrement on his body. Some have said tying him up in this way is a violation of his human rights.

By Lee Jung-gook, staff reporter

The son and his wife had smiles on their faces; their elderly mother did not. Seventy-four years old this year, she completed a simple registration form and walked around the unfamiliar nursing home surroundings as the couple helped her along. “This is a great place,” he kept saying. Expressionless, the mother seemed to have no clue what was so great about it.

On the morning Apr. 8, Lee Mal-sook, 74, was walked into a nursing home in a mid-sized Gyeonggi city. Her daughter-in-law, who looked to be in her late forties, gestured over to the women’s showers next to Room 120, Lee’s future residence, and shouted, “Now you can wash up here every evening. It’s right next door.” Lee looked at the darkened showers, her face dark. She was visibly uncomfortable.

As her son and daughter-in-law left, she followed after them like a small child. For a while they argued in front of the entrance. “You have to stay here now, mother.” “I don’t want to. You can’t make me.” Finally, the couple left, and she stared blankly as they got on the elevator and disappeared. The automatic door - operated only by the front desk - shut tight.

Lee unpacked her bags on the bed next to the window in Room 120. First, she pulled a crinkled piece of paper out of her pocket. It showed the phone numbers of her children. She gave the volunteer some yellow tape and asked them to put it on the wall. A nurse came in and put a nametag on the bed. In the blank for the condition, clear letters read, “Dementia.” Seemingly resigned, Lee slumped down on the bed and let out a long, soft sigh.

She wasn’t used to living with others, and she ended up barely sleeping that night. Having the four walls around her made her feel confined, not relaxed.

When we woke up the next morning, the sight that greeted her was a male nurse changing the diapers of the women sharing her room. She was stricken with terror at the thought of showing her private parts to a man, however old she might be.

That morning, she received “bath care” - regardless of her feelings on the matter. Tuesdays and Thursdays were regular bath days. She went into the shower room, but it turned out to be a men’s facility. The women’s showers were dark. Employees typically used them to wash their hands or brush their teeth. Nurses dressed like butchers in rubber smocks and boots came in and stripped the women, who lay on bathing blocks. Another woman was already lying on the next block when she arrived.

After the bath, she had to walk down the hall back to her room without any clothes on. She tried to cover her body with the single towel. Passing employees watched her. Entering the room, she let out a deep sigh. “Did I come here to see this?” she muttered.

Lee Mal-sook went back home after just two days. The biggest reason for her fear was a sense of sexual shame. The human rights of seniors are often ignored when the workers are bathing them. Because of scheduling issues, male nurses sometimes bathe female patients, and vice versa. The door remains wide open while it’s happening. Two nurses typically bathe one patient, and when it’s over, the elderly patients have to go down the hall to their rooms with only a towel or blanket to cover them. Not once did I see someone get dressed in the shower room before coming back out.

Lee endured the same humiliating treatment. When I peered into her room, I saw her putting on her clothes. “I was so embarrassed I couldn‘t look up,” she said, her head lowered. “My head was spinning.”

On April 10, the day after the “group bath,” she called her son and had him take her back home. Her bed was already empty by the time I arrived at the nursing home. A nurse responded apathetically when I asked what had happened. “She said she couldn’t live the rest of her life in a place like this. I guess she’ll find someplace better.”

Lee Mal-sook is escorted back to her room after a bath by a nurse. Lee left the nursing home after just two days

When I had just started volunteering at the nursing home, I was given only odd jobs such as cleaning. Then an opportunity came up to be a “bathing volunteer.” It was on April 4, my third day there. Mr. Park, the most senior of the male workers, led me to a room and told me I was to bathe Kim Gyeong-deok, a 96-year-old man residing there. Park helped the elderly man to his feet and walked him to the showers, where he proceeded to give an easy, detailed explanation on how to do the bathing.

“What do you do with the clothes?” I asked. “Put them outside the door,” he said, and left without closing the door. He didn’t appear to care much whether it was open or not. I closed it and began preparing for the bath. The old man’s body was scrawny, and his clothes came off easily. As soon as he was naked, a foul smell began to spread over the roughly 10-meter-square shower stall. This was not the characteristic body odor of the elderly - it was something else entirely.

Underneath the mirror hung a towel for bubble baths. Twenty-nine residents of Block A all used that one towel to scrub their entire bodies. I stopped a passing worker. “Do you use that one towel for everyone?” I asked. “Yeah, that’s enough,” came the reply. The old man didn’t say a word. “The water’s warm, isn’t it?” I asked, only to be met with silence. “I bet it’s nice to get a bath, huh?” No reply.

Then, just as we were finishing up, he suddenly roared. “This is so humiliating!”

He was hard of hearing, and his voice was a bellow. I asked him why he was embarrassed. “I have a prostate problem,” he said. “I wet myself. It smells bad. Its embarrassing to have someone see that.”

He stared down at his crotch, which looked as frail as the rest of him. That was the source of the smell - it was his prostate problem.

I finished up, opened the door, and yelled, “Could someone bring me his clothes?” No one came. I went down the hall and asked for clothes. Finally, I saw Mr. Park. “Just tell him to go back to his room,” he said.

Hunched over, the elderly man crept back to his room with just a towel to cover his bony frame. He was visible to all the employees passing along the hallway. As soon as he got to his room, he shouted, “Give me my clothes.” I finished what I was doing and went into the room to find him squatting there, still naked, straining with all his might to get his clothes out from the dresser. “What’s your hurry?” said Mr. Park as he came in and helped the man put on his underwear. Once dressed, he lay for a while on his bed, his eyes closed.

There are also a lot of problems with “diaper care,” which takes place at 6 o’clock every morning at the nursing home. The patients who have trouble getting around and only lie in bed are not able to go to the bathroom to relieve themselves. As a result, their diapers must be changed on a regular basis.

Male nurses sometimes change the diapers of female patients, and female nurses sometimes change the diapers of male patients. Inevitably, the old folks feel sexually humiliated. While those who are unconscious because of a severe stroke and those who are suffering from dementia are unable to express their feelings about this, some old people at the homes do indicate that they do not want this kind of treatment.

Even though Park is a man, he does not hesitate to remove female patients’ undergarments. Kim Suk-ui, 76, was put in the nursing home after she had a heart attack. “It’s terrible. People as young as my grandkids can see my private parts. But what can I do, with my body the way it is?” she said with a laugh and a sigh.

Lying next to Kim was Han Jeong-im, 84. As Park approached, Han tried to wave him away. “Let me it do it, leave me alone,” she said. “It’s okay. Just think of me as your grandson,” Park said in an attempt to soothe her. But Han kept shaking her head.

The smell during the diaper change process is worse than you could imagine. The stench of excrement mixed with the body odor of the elderly pervades all 1,652 square meters of the nursing home.

Some days when I got to work, the smells were particularly bad. Those were days when there had been an “incident.” An “incident,” in the parlance of nursing home nurses, refers to the mess created when people with Alzheimer’s defecate and then rub their hands in the excrement and smear it all around. When something of this sort happens, the patient must be bathed again, and the sheets and clothing have to be laundered. Even so, the smell lingers for days. Various unnecessary human rights violations occur during this process.

Lee Hyeon-deok, 65, was put in the nursing home because of his Alzheimer’s, and his hands are always tied with a cloth band. I asked a nurse, also surnamed Lee, why they always tied the old man’s hands, “He takes smearing feces to a new level,” the worker said, shaking his head. “It can’t even be put into words.” A nurse who was passing by just then joined the conversation. “There could be a government inspection. You should untie his hands.”

But for the two weeks that I was working, Lee’s hands remained tied. Around the time that I left the job, his tied hands were hidden with a blanket.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]