Courtesy of caring.com
The sexual life of our elderly is something we younger people shudder to think (and I confess not guilty) — whether it be an aversion to thinking about what lies behind a parent of closed bedroom door, or horror on the notion of Viagra in the medicine cabinet.
This willed ignorance about the sexuality of those who somehow or other, managed to inspire us, quite the nursing home stays, it turns out — sometimes with heartbreaking consequences.
A recent study by a team of Kansas State University includes a subtle, but poignant, example. A couple had moved to a nursing home room with adjacent hospital beds. One of the spouses had a condition to elevate him a leg, and the beds had is positioned so that the leg on the same side as his wife, making it difficult for them was to hold hands. Employees do not see this as a problem, and told the couple, in essence, to live with it.
Slate offers a more extreme example. Bob and Dorothy, both suffering from dementia, fell in love in an assisted living facility. When Bob's son ran on 95-year-old father in dilicto delicto, he demanded staff separate the two, and eventually his father moved to another facility. Heartbreak followed, as well as the rapid decline of the physical and psychological of the graying Romeo and Juliet.
Why all the suffering? Because Bob's son couldn't bear to think about it.
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