Breathe and cry

As volunteers of the Foundation "old age in joy" brought to the Mordovian houses of the elderly guitar, accordion, sweets, diapers and dogs

When you work a lot with people who need help, and with those who provide it, it begins to seem that you have already grown at least some kind of protective shell. But after those like this, you understand that this is an illusion. From a trip to the nursing home in Mordovia with the volunteers “old age to joy” I came in helplessness before what I saw and before I had to write about it.

But I know for sure a person who knows how to write about charity with impeccable intonation. Our observer, my editor and teacher are Zoya Valentinovna Eroshok. I really wanted to consult with her, but did not have time. On the night, when I returned from a business trip, Zoya Valentinovna was gone. She was a friend of the Foundation "old age." While I am writing this text, it seems, I hear her voice.

This time, the volunteers go to two nursing houses with a night train: one specialized in the village of Potma and one common in the neighboring Tarkhanskaya-Potma. And I decide to go by car to help with the delivery of humanitarian aid and at the same time take dogs with me. They went to orphanages with me many times, know how to show tricks, love to hug and communicate.

Preparation begins with the collection of humanitarian aid long before the assigned date. Everything is needed: glasses, tonometers, hand cream, razor machines, toothpaste, wet wipes, diapers, heaters, warm things, rugs, yarn. All this is helped by the fund to collect private donors and large companies.

On the eve of the exit, I come to the warehouse, employees take out and load an endless number of boxes and bales into my not at all small minivan. I only have one question: how? Like eight people who go in a reserved seat car, they had to take all this to themselves if there were no cars ... Volunteer Galya answers merrily:

“In fact, it’s not difficult: we carry it in batches, load it to the third regiments and to the vestibule. There are problems only if we go out on a half -land, where the train costs three minutes. Then you have to throw it out of the doors and windows directly to the platform. ”

When the machine is loaded in the literal sense of the word under the ceiling, the accordion remains. He did not get into the salon, so it makes me a company, fastened in the front seat. I also go to the night. Only five hundred kilometers, the road is good, only quickly becomes much colder than in the city. All the same, I can’t resist and in the morning I stop in the middle of the field, take a walk with dogs and look at the stars. There are so many of them, and they are so bright here that Sirius I took several kilometers for the lantern behind the forest ...

With the volunteers “old age in joy” we meet in the Zubovo-Polyansk Special branch of the Shiringushsky boarding house for the elderly and the disabled ”at seven in the morning. They were taken from a half -steel in Potma by a driver on a UAZ - a real “loaf”.

The “old age in joy” charitable foundation began with the trip of the current director of the Elizabeth Oleskina Foundation (then a student of the Phil Facus of Moscow State University) to a folklore expedition to the Pskov region in 2006. She could not remain indifferent to the problems of lonely old men. I organized a volunteer group that began to help the houses of elderly and needy elderly people. In 2011, a charity fund was registered.

Every weekend teams of volunteers go to the nursing homes, arrange holidays, concerts, bring care funds, make repairs, equip territories. The program "grandchildren by correspondence" is constantly growing. Now these are thousands of letters monthly, which people write to lonely elderly people throughout the country. To date, the fund has a twenty -thousandth volunteer network, in the care of two hundred nursing houses in twenty regions of Russia and six patronage services for home departure.

Eighty -eight people live in the nursing home in the village with the eloquent name of Potma. This is one of the first similar institutions, which was built back in the 50s of the twentieth century. Then in the Soviet Union, convicts under the 58th article began to leave prisons, who spent or rehabilitated.

Mordovia is a prison region. Many have nowhere to go, there were no relatives, real estate, and livelihoods. The state came up with such "boarding houses" where the released could spend the rest of their lives.

Gradually, just dysfunctional, lonely old people who were on the street, seriously ill people who refused their relatives and who cannot serve themselves, began to get here. And also to a specialized nursing home, graduates of neuropsychiatric dispensaries and orphanages for children with developmental features are transferred when they grow up.

So they wander from one state institution to another. All life.

The territory of the nursing home is a rather sad sight. Previously, its inhabitants could engage in agriculture. The dilapidated building of the former barn has been preserved, a long -abandoned garden and even a small garden are guessed. Under the new legislation, all this is prohibited, because "it can bring material benefits." For each apple tree in the garden you need a separate certificate that allows you to grow apples on it ...

The building itself looks like a very old hospital, it smells the same. Volunteers are warming up for tea in the residential, we are waiting for the end of breakfast and the gathering of walking inhabitants of the house in the dining room, where there will be a small concert.

Experienced volunteer Elena says:

“I always say to those who come for the first time: crying normally, it's even good. We went out into the corridor, breathed, cried, returned to the ward. It is very important to do what you like. You do not come here to suffer or work out austerity. Love to sing under the button accordion - sing. Love to write postcards - write, hug - hug. No need to torment yourself, you can always find than to help so that you like it. Not only wards, but also volunteers must take out positive emotions and experience out of the trip. ”

Those who can walk or move in a stroller gather in the dining room of the house. We sing songs of wartime under the button accordion and a little more modern too. First, the audience is a little shy. But the staff sings well, claps, encourages the audience. Surprisingly, not “burnt out” (at such and such work), nurses, it seems, do not spend days and nights here, but also recently arrived. Under the Katyusha, the hall thaws.

After the songs, dogs become the absolute hit of the program. For the concert, I bring the oldest and experienced on the volunteer trips of Chase. He knows how to hold the audience: depicts a “hare”, catches a thrown ball, makes volts, somersaults and eights, walks on its hind legs. To the complete delight of his audience and the smallest, but such white and fluffy spitz Molly can be stroked. She is only a year, she has never been to us on such trips. Quickly relaxes, grandmothers only want to stroke: "She looks like a coupling, so soft and warm!"

I think to myself: “Why cry, they are only old ...” While we go around the hall so that everyone can chat with dogs, volunteers continue to sing, and part is going to bypass the chambers with the bedrooms who could not come to the dining room. I have to change dogs. Chase and Molly were tired, talked with more than fifty people, this is a great load.

Yo-yo and a thunderstorm are going on the wards with me, their task is to show several simple tricks in each ward and let themselves stroke. It seems to be completely easy. In our pack, yo-yo-started, the largest, the largest, most confident. When he enters the first few chambers, where rather unstable and funny men live, he behaves as usual. Rejoices, jumps, tries to steal a sandwich lying on the nightstand.

When we go to the ward, where three non -existent elderly women live, I do not recognize him. Tatyana Anatolyevna suffered a stroke, ambulance doctors found her on the street. She cannot speak and move her legs, her hands obey her, but bad. Yosya stands on her bed with his front paws, slips his head under her arms, freezes and closes her eyes ... It seems to me for a few seconds that she does not even breathe. Tatyana Anatolyevna strokes him on the head, and with the second hand he shows me a thumb.

In the far corner of the chamber-Ekaterina Alexandrovna, she has a severe form of dementia, she mutters something all the time. I got into this nursing home from a neuropsychiatric dispensary, where she spent most of her life. It is restlessly spinning in bed, nurses ask her if an anesthetic injection is needed. When I raise a thunderstorm to the edge of her bed, she suddenly falls silent, wraps her head at two hands and freezes. The thunderstorm is pressed to her chest and stops even blinking. I have never seen my dogs so calm and understanding before.

Nurses explain to me that you can not approach the third grandmother in the ward, she is blind and dumb, she has oncology. All the same, he will not understand anything, you can move on. She has a completely motionless face. But I still decide to try. I raise a thunderstorm and put my grandmother’s palm on her head. The hand feels the wool, eyes and wet nose of the dog. And suddenly the grandmother begins to smile and cry at the same time ...

When she releases a thunderstorm and we move on, Tatyana Anatolyevna from her left bed suddenly grabs my hand, and the second shows something. Nurses translate to me what she wants to say: please come again! The photographer Vika and I go out into the corridor. Breathe and cry.

In the dining room, employees of the house feed volunteers with dinner, the senior nurse, Valentina Nikolaevna Zhakina, explains:

“It became, of course, heavier. I have been working here for thirty years. I got it by distribution. There used to be a garden, cattle, after all, in business. Then it was forbidden, but there were at least a masseur, some kind of medical technique, a specialist in physiotherapy exercises. At least some variety for them. In 2015, everything was reduced. Students and schoolchildren also came, arranged holidays. And now the parents are against it. After all, there are zones around, and we live freed. They are afraid that the children hear something. Now from entertainment for the elderly only cigarettes, chifir and TV. The younger and average medical staff remained. Salary with all allowances and bonuses in the best times about 15 thousand, for 5/2 schedule. ”

In the second nursing home in Tarkhan Potma, we come after dinner. Everything goes much easier here. The building is newer, better. 50 people live here, there are more staff. Mostly representatives of the local population - Mordovians - come here. But everyone speaks well and sings around in Russian well, play with volunteers in volleyball balloons and clap them the performance of Chase repeated the performance.

Only one legless man in a wheelchair sits in the corner and does not really want to participate in the concert. I go up to him and suggest stroking Molly, put her on his knees. He sticks out the stump of amputated brushes from the sleeves of the quilted jacket and presses Molly to himself.

After going around the chambers, we are invited to his office as a deputy director, Raisa Anatolyevna Babkina, stings tea, feeds with huge orange magnificent Mordovian pancakes and says:

“The worst thing is the fate of those who live here, their loneliness. Each life turned so that they were alone. When it became necessary, there was no one to help, nowhere to go. Someone burned the house, someone drank so that he received frostbite, amputation and could no longer serve himself. But they drink all for a reason. Each life was not easy and brought them here. ”

When we say goodbye to the staff of the house and volunteers before my departure, I have only my favorite words Zoe Valentinovna Eroshko: thanks, thanks!

In December 2017, the government approved a “complex of measures to create a long -term care system for elderly citizens and people with disabilities in Russia”. He must provide the necessary social and medical support to everyone who needs it. So far, this system in our country does not work.

“Old age in joy”, together with other NPOs and expert organizations, develops a methodology for the program. The project is being implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Health and the Agency for Strategic Initiatives and Regional Administrations. The pilot launch is designed for three years in six regions of Russia.

In order for the system to work, you need to make many adjustments to the current systems of social and medical care. Changes are required to regional legislation, coordination of the work of doctors and social workers, the emergence of many new or weakly working services such as day -time centers for people with little mobility or dementia. We need schools of care for relatives, in general, a system of assistance to relatives, caring for their elderly parents.

It is necessary to emerge normal patronage services so that people can live at home and receive help, you need to learn how to care for elderly people, which means you need to learn how to rehabilitate, activate people, finally prepare a huge number of specialists who will correctly understand the essence of the departure and who will skillfully do it. Now the nannies, and the nurses, the old fashioned floor, walls, bedside tables and do little human. And if they are engaged, then it is wrong.

The long -term care system is an excellent initiative for the implementation of which years will take. And the help of the elderly in the homes of the elderly and lonely old people at home is needed today.

This can happen to each of us, with our parents, grandfathers and grandmothers.

Elizabeth Oleskin, director of the old age in joy, says:

“Of course, in eleven years that we have been using the elderly, a lot has changed. In our fund, medical and material assistance programs to the elderly in institutions and at home, leisure and rehabilitation programs appeared, “our” departments and patronage services have appeared, where our nurses, which we pay salaries, work, and where we buy personal hygiene items, scatters, medicines, etc. We teach care assistants. We help organize the right care in institutions and in patronage services. We now have many serious professionals who have domestic and foreign experience in organizing care and help to the elderly.

Perhaps the most difficult problem for us is to find money for labor for our care assistants. In many nursing houses, there are critically lacking staff to provide older care and leisure. The project of the “One Day of Happiness” Foundation is aimed at raising funds to finance the work of these employees. Every day they give the elderly communication and joy, prolong their life and make it better. ”

Help!

You can help the fund here:

https://starikam.org/help/

Relapses for transfer in rubles

Recipient: BF "old age in joy"
Yur. Address: 127006, Moscow, Sadovaya-Triumfalnaya street, 4–10
TIN: 7710479486
GPP: 771001001
Calist account: 40703810838000070062
Recipient Bank: Sberbank of Russia PJSC
Correspondent account: 30101810400000000225
BIC: 044525225