PAX Centurion - January / February 2013

Page 40 • PAX CENTURION • January/February 2013 617-989-BPPA (2772) BPPA Retired Patrolmen’s Division News Directors of the Retired Patrolmen’s Division of the BPPA: John Murphy David Mackin Joe Vannelli Joe O’Malley Billy Flippin See Elders on page 41 V iola Baez wouldn’t budge. Her daughter’s family had just invested about $125,000 in a new kind of home for her, a high-tech cottage that might revolutionize the wayAmericans care for their aging relatives. But Viola wouldn’t even step inside. She told her family she would rather continue living in the fam- ily’s dining room than move into the shed-size dwelling that had been lowered by crane into the back yard of their Fairfax County home. “You’re throwing me out!You’re sending me out to a doghouse! Why not put me in a manicomio?” Viola, 88 , told them, using the Spanish word for madhouse. Then the air conditioner blew. As temperatures and tempers soared in the main house, Viola’s family coaxed her into the cottage to cool off. Viola stayed the night, then another, and another, until summer had turned to fall. As the first private inhabitant of a MedCottage, Viola is a reluc- tant pioneer in the search for alternatives to nursing homes for aging Americans. Her relatives agonized over the best way to care for Viola only after her ability to care for herself became questionable. Their decision exposed intergenerational friction that worsened after the new dwelling arrived. The MedCottage, designed by a Blacksburg company with help fromVirginia Tech, is essentially a portable hospital room. Virginia state law, which recognized the dwellings a few years ago, classifies them as “temporary family health-care structures.” But many simply know them as “granny pods,” and they have arrived on the market as the nation prepares for a wave of graying baby boomers to retire. Over the past decade, the population of Americans who are 65 or older has grown faster than the total population, the Census Bureau Keeping elders close, in the backyard By Fredrick Kunkle says. In less than 20 years, the number of Americans who are 65 or older will top 72 million, or more than twice the population of older Americans in 2000, and many will need to find living arrangements that balance their need for independence and special care. Viola’s family understood this. Her daughter, Socorrito Baez- Page, 56, who goes by Soc, and her son-in-law, David Page , 59 – both of whom are doctors – began planning her care well before Viola’s husband died of cancer last February. They explored many options and had firsthand experience with several. Soc and David had taken care of or arranged various types of care, including assisted liv- ing and hospice, for other parents. Their decision to buy the first MedCottage in private use, along withViola’s bumpy adjustment to life inside it, offers a look at an un- usual solution to an increasingly common situation and the emotional trade-offs that arise from it. Daily routines T he soft whoosh of an oxygen machine fills the MedCottage whenViola opens her eyes at the light streaming from the windows above her bed. “Hello,” Soc says. Soc has been up for a while. She stands almost at the center of the MedCottage, a self-enclosed space that blends bedroom, kitchenette, foyer and bath the way that a fork and spoon combine to form a spork. Soc has already folded up the rollout bed where she has spent the night at her mother’s side, and performed other chores before Viola wakes. Viola asks for a bathrobe, and Soc helps her into it, careful not to tangle the oxygen tubes trailing from her mother’s nose. A week after Viola underwent surgery to remove a cataract, Viola’s left eye also looks puffy, as if she’s been crying again, as she has almost daily since her husband died. “Open your eye,” Soc says, speaking in Spanish, as she adminis- ters drops. Viola blinks, as if it’s painful. “Eyes closed, please,” Soc says. “Cinco minuto.” After the eye medicine, Viola maneuvers her walker across the MedCottage to the bathroom. While Viola washes up, Soc brews a mug of instant coffee for her in the microwave oven and prepares a vaporizer that delivers Viola’s asthma medicine. Viola’s walker squeaks softly as she returns and takes a seat at the kitchenette's counter. Her hands tremble as she takes the mug and sips the coffee through the straw, so as not to spill any hot liquid. When the vaporizer is ready, Soc puts a mask onViola. While mist pours from the vents in her mother’s face mask, Soc rummages through a cabinet filled with medicine bottles and puts pills in a small cup at her mother’s elbow. Then Soc prepares her mother’s breakfast, which is crackers and string cheese. Viola appears small, hunkered down in her chair. But her eyes can become huge when she talks about growing up in Puerto Rico or her The BPPA Retired Patrolmen’s Division and Santa Flippin Wishes a Merry Christmas to All!