This story is about a lady who I will call Lula. The place where we live is an assisted living facility. That means that each of the residents might have a variety of different mental and/or physical ailments. Many people here suffer from dementia at different levels of severity. Lula is one of those people.
Lula lives in apartment #318. My wife and I live in apartment #118. The building has four floors, so there is also a #018 and a #218.
Every day Lula walks through the halls on the way to and from the dining room. Almost every day she gets confused and ends up on the wrong floor because she either forgot to get on the elevator or got off on the wrong floor. Sometimes we will hear her calling out "I don't know where my apartment is...Which apartment is mine?"
Because each of the floors is nearly identical, rooms #018, #118, #218, and #318 are all stacked one on top of the other. If you were to exit the elevator on the wrong floor you would end up at the wrong room. This is what Lula does.
After each meal, Lula will end up at one of the x18 rooms depending on which floor she finds herself on. She will open the door (or knock if it is locked) and call out for Sybil (her afternoon caretaker), but of course Sybil is not there.
One time Lula ended up in our room and accused my wife of stealing all of her furniture. When my wife tried to explain the situation, Lula responded with a slew of curse words.
Last week she ended up in apartment #018. Finding someone inside, Lula began to yell at the poor resident whose apartment it actually was. The lady in that room did not look kindly on Lula barging in (as I'm sure it wasn't the first time!), so she just decided to yell back. This created quite a scene! Sybil appeared and tried to calm Lula down, but but she was not able to control her.
No one knows what she will end up doing tomorrow. As for my wife and I? We will continue to point Lula back to the elevator and instruct her to take it to the third floor.
Here's to you, Lula. I hope you find your way home!
