Location: Lakeview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center
Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2014; 6:30-8:00 pm
I arrived early to see that Jim,
Jack and Elmer were already assembled. Jack was wearing a ribbon and when I asked
about it, he said that it was for ‘Veteran’s
Day’. With Jack’s history in
service, this was of course appropriate.
Jim told me that he was finally moving out and after 10 long years was going to some studio in the ‘West Loop’. Soon we were joined by Larry and Gwyn. Today was the “reveal” of our very last issue and as
usual, Lakeview Nursing had not printed any copies since the copier was “broken”. Gwyn said that she should have known better
and I said that it was perhaps “poetic”
that this should happen for the last issue. Gwyn said that she could go to ‘Kinko’s’ to print some copies, but
since we were expecting 2 new volunteers, she said that she would wait till
they showed up. Well, no one else showed
up besides Fran and so we decided to forego the reveal of the issue till next
time at our “Holiday Party”. We would instead spend the rest of the
evening discussing the structure of the new “Games
Night” project.
 |
| Darts at Lakeview Nursing! |
We started by identifying games
that we could play – ‘Bowling’, ‘Cards’, ‘Uno’, ‘Dominoes’
etc. I said that we should have some trivia
game as well, and some other ideas came up such as ‘Corn Hole’. While they apparently had bowling supplies, I
told Fran that perhaps we could get Wilson to make us ‘Corn Hole’ boards! I asked
about ‘Darts’ and Elmer said that nowadays
you can get darts with magnetic ends.
Eh, that’s what I had meant. The
last thing I want is for seniors throwing real darts in a nursing home. Gwyn talked about some card game where you
matched the picture on the card with a phrase and that sounded like fun as
well. I was a bit concerned about
bowling, especially since most of the residents were in wheelchairs. However, it seems that they do it all the time
and so it would be fine.
The project would be once a month to start with and since we
did not know how many residents would show up, we discussed the number of
volunteers that we should recruit. I
said that perhaps we should just have the regulars to start with. Both Larry and Jim felt that if there was money
involved ,residents would come “out of the
woodwork”. Gwyn said that we could
have a raffle, where for every 15 minutes that you stay, you get an additional
raffle ticket. So after an hour the
residents could have a max of 4 tickets, though you could win only once. Gwyn wanted to have 5 winners of $5 each, but
we needed to clarify with Chicago Cares if giving money was permitted. When you buy something, you can produce
receipts for compensation, and tax purposes, but that would not be possible with
cash.
Jim was excited about his new apartment and couldn't wait to get
out. He said that he had been trapped
for 10 years in this place. I asked why he
hadn't left and he said that all of his social security and other income checks
came directly here and that’s why he couldn't leave. Someone had recently sued the city for low-income
housing and he managed to get on the lawsuit, because of which he could move
into that new place. He said that many
of the other people living here want to go as well...like. Elmer. Next was the issue of storage of all of the
game materials, since Gwyn said that she did
not want to carry everything all the time.
I asked about locking all of it here, at which Gwyn said that the
management may “misplace” the
key. I said that we could get a combination
lock because the games should stay here in case Gwyn can’t make it to one of
the sessions. This led to Fran telling
us how people usually “borrow” things. She has lost a lot of dog bowls, which we
use for dogs to drink water out of during ‘Pet
Therapy’. She once found one bowl with
soup stains. Now that was disgusting.
All this time Larry was getting warmed up and then let loose
on the management here. He showed me how
they print a one pager newsletter every day, but tell us that the copier is
broken when it came to our magazine. I
asked Gwyn why they hated us and Larry, who was in top form, kept asking if I "saw". I didn't know what to say, but I
think I knew what he meant. Time was up
and I left after an interesting evening of conversation with old friends. I will miss Jim, but he has promised to visit
for the games night. But before that, we had one more session to go.
*All the client's names have been changed in order to respect their privacy
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